lATEWAY SERIES -VANDYKE 

^ - BURKE ON 
-: It CONCILIATION 



Q^m 



MACDONAl 





Class _-^_^L. 
Book_^^:l 



\-id^ 



COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



OF ENGLISH TEXTS 



GENERAL EDITOR 

HENRY VAN DYKE 



THE GATEWAY SERIES, 
HENRY VAN DYKE, General Editor. 

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Professor Felix E, 

Schelling, University of Pennsylvania. 
Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Dr. Hamilton W. Mabie, 

"The Outlook." 
Shakespeare's Macbeth. Professor T. M. Parrott, Prince- 
ton University. 
Milton's Minor Poems. Professor Mary A. Jordan, Smith 

College. 
Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Professor 

C. T. Winchester, Wesleyan University. 
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Professor James A. 

Tufts, Phillips Exeter Academy. 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation. Professor William 

MacDonald, Brown University. 
Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner. Professor George 

E. Woodberry, Columbia University. 
Scott's Ivanhoe. Professor Francis H. Stoddard, New 

York University. 
Scott's Lady of the Lake. Professor R. M. Alden, Leland 

Stanford Jr. University. 
iRViNG's Life of Goldsmith. Professor Martin Wright 

Sampson, Indiana University. 
MaCAULAY'S Milton. Rev. E. L. Gulick, Lawrenceville 

School. 
Macaulay's Addison. Professor Charles F. McClumpha, 

University of Minnesota. 
Macaulay's Life of Johnson. Professor J. S. Clark, North- 
western University. 
Carlyle's Essay on Burns. Professor Edwin Mims, Trin- 
ity College, North Carolina. 
George Eliot's Silas Marner. Professor W. L. Cross, 

Yale University. 
Tennyson's Princess. Professor Katharine Lee Bates, 

Wellesley College. 
Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and 

Elaine, and The Passing of Arthur. Henry van 

Dyke. 



GATEIVAY SERIES 



SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 
WITH AMERICA 



BY 



EDMUND BURKE 



EDITED BY 

WILLIAM MACDONALD, Ph.D., LL.D. 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN BROWN UNIVERSITY 




NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



rA 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 
MAY 3 1904 
n CoDyrieht Entry 

CLASS a- XXc. No. 

^ U ^ ^ I 
COPY B 



r T- ^ \ 






Copyright, 1904, by 
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 



BURKE S CONCILIATION. 
W. P. I 



PREFACE 

A BOOK whose method and aim are not fairly appar- 
ent on inspection is not Hkely, I think, to be made 
much clearer through the agency of a preface. In the 
present instance, accordingly, it seems unnecessary to 
say more than that I have sought, in harmony with the 
general plan of the Gateway Series, to treat Burke's 
speech, not as a " literary puzzle " for the student, or 
as a medium for learned display by the editor, but 
rather as a great argumentative discourse whose inter- 
est for American youth ought always to be historical 
as well as literary. The Speech on Conciliation is 
rightly regarded as a masterpiece of logical exposition 
and elaboration, but it will not do to forget that it is 
also the sanest and most powerful plea for reasonable- 
ness and consideration put forth during the whole 
period of the struggle between the American colonies 
and the mother country. The introduction, therefore, 
dwells more upon the circumstances out of which the 
speech sprang than upon its place in Burke's political 
philosophy or its technical contribution to formal argu- 
mentative writing, while the notes have been kept as 
free as possible from the minute literary parallelism — 
not seldom, as it seems to me, appreciably overdone — 

5 



6 Preface 

with which it has sometimes been thought necessary to 
weight down this particular piece of good Hterature. 
In other words, I have assumed that the teachers and 
students who will use this book will be prepared to do 
some work, especially in literary and rhetorical lines, 
for themselves, and will not care to have their intel- 
lectual food too much predigested. 

Much of the material in the notes was collected for 
other purposes long before I ever thought of editing 
the Speech on Conciliation^ and I have not refrained 
from using it because other editors have traversed 
somewhat the same ground. Certain portions of the 
explanatory matter have also done duty, in one form or 
another, in other editions, and could not well be dis- 
pensed with or radically changed in this. A consid- 
erable number of notes, however, chiefly such as deal 
with historical, legal, or parliamentary matters, are new. 
It will be remembered that most of the bibliographi- 
cal matter is, by the plan of the series, relegated to a 
supplementary volume. 

The text is that of the second edition, but with 
modernized spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. 

WILLIAM MACDONALD. 
Brown University. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction : 

I. The Colonies and the Mother Country 
II. The Early Life of Burke 
III. The Speech on Conciliation . 
IV. Burke's Subsequent Career . 



Bibliographical Note .... 
Speech on Conciliation with America . 
Notes 



9 

26 
30 

34 

37 

131 



INTRODUCTION 



I. The Colonies and the Mother Country 

From the middle of the seventeenth century it had 
been the pohcy of the EngUsh Parhament to regulate the 
trade of the American colonies with primary reference 
to the interests of British merchants. A long series of 
statutes, known collectively as the Navigation Acts or 
Acts of Trade, were eventually passed to secure these 
results. The acts were restrictive in that they debarred 
foreigners, especially the Dutch, from participation in 
the colonial carrying trade, but they were not oppressive, 
nor did they on the whole seriously interfere with the 
development of colonial commerce. As an offset to 
some of the acts, bounties were granted on the pro- 
duction or exportation of specified articles, as, for 
example, on the rice of Carolina. Viewed from the 
standpoint of the present day, the policy of England 
was short-sighted. It was, however, in accord with the 
prevailing political and economic theories of the time, 
which looked upon a colony as a possession to be ex- 
ploited for the benefit of the mother country. 

From the beginning, however, the Acts of Trade had 
9 



lo Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

been more or less systematically evaded by the colonies, 
particularly by New England. The most lucrative com- 
merce of New England in the early part of the eighteenth 
century was with the French and Dutch sugar-producing 
colonies in the West Indies, and this trade, though for- 
bidden by law, continued to thrive, and in no small part 
with the connivance of the customs officials. From time 
to time the English merchants complained to the Lords 
of Trade — the committee of the Privy Council through 
which the affairs of the colonies were administered — of 
their loss of revenue, but political corruption in England 
was so firmly intrenched that no effective steps toward 
reform were taken for some time. 

The capitulation of Montreal, in 1761, carried with it 
the surrender of all Canada, and by the treaty of Paris, 
in 1763, which closed the Seven Years' War, the whole 
of the continental possessions of France in North 
America passed into the control of Great Britain, The 
colonies had exerted themselves to the utmost during 
the war, and many of them had incurred large debts, 
notwithstanding the reimbursement by Parliament of a 
considerable part of their expenses. There were loud 
complaints in England, however, of the cost of the war, 
and particularly of the increase of the national debt, 
now amounting to about ;£" 140,000,000. The immediate 
advantage of the war, in freedom from French aggres- 
sion, obviously accrued to the colonies rather than to the 
mother country, while the likelihood of a renewal of the 
war by France as soon as a convenient opportunity offered 



Introduction ii 

made it clear that what had been won must also be 
defended. The time seemed ripe, therefore, for some 
reorganization of the colonial system, with a view to the 
more effective control of the colonies by Great Britain. 

When, in February, 1763, Charles Townshend became 
First Lord of Trade in the brief ministry of Lord Bute, 
it was announced that requisitions on the colonial assem- 
bhes were to give place to taxes laid by Parliament, that 
colonial governors and judges were thereafter to be paid 
by the Crown instead of by the colonies, and that a small 
standing army was to be maintained in America at 
colonial expense. Grenville, who sucqeeded Bute as 
prime minister in April, had been one of the Secretaries 
of State in the previous administration, and was especially 
well informed in regard to colonial matters. He resolved 
to put an end to American smuggling, the extent of 
which had greatly increased during the war. "The 
Commissioners of Customs were ordered at once to their 
posts. Several new revenue officers were appointed with 
more rigid rules for the discharge of their duties. The 
Board of Trade issued a circular to the colonies represent- 
ing that the revenue had not kept pace with the increasing 
commerce, and did not yield more than one-quarter of 
the cost of collection, and requiring that illicit commerce 
should be suppressed, and that proper support should be 
given to the customhouse officials. English ships of war 
were at the same time stationed off the American coast 
for the purpose of intercepting smugglers." ^ 

1 Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii, p. 334, 



12 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

The next step was the passage of a new Act of Trade. 
An act of 1733, commonly known as the Molasses Act, 
imposing prohibitory duties on the sugar and molasses of 
the French West Indies in the interest of the English 
sugar colonies, had been generally disregarded. That 
act was now revived, though with reduced duties, and 
a new act passed laying duties on sugar, indigo, coffee, 
wines, linens, and other articles imported into the 
colonies, and restricting to Great Britain the colonial 
export trade in lumber and iron. The receipts from 
these new duties were to be "disposed of by Parliament, 
towards defraying the necessary expenses of defending, 
protecting, and securing the British colonies and planta- 
tions in America." At the same time, however, bounties 
were granted on American hemp and rice, and the whale 
fishery was thrown open to colonial participation without 
restriction. 

The third part of Grenville's scheme was a Stamp Act. 
Stamp duties had long been familiar in England, but 
Grenville moved slowly, and apparently with reluctance, 
in extending the system to America. In March, 1764, 
the proposed introduction of a stamp bill was announced 
in the House of Commons, but the matter was then laid 
over until the next session in order that the colonies 
might, if they chose, suggest some method more agree- 
able to them of raising the revenue which had been 
determined upon. 

When the news of the proposed legislation for the 
colonies reached America, it everywhere occasioned pro- 



Introduction 13 

found apprehension. Whatever the theoretical right of 
Parliament to tax the colonies might be, that right had 
not in fact been exercised thus far. The Acts of Trade 
had had for their object the regulation of colonial com- 
merce, and although at times vexatiously restrictive, had 
not been on principle objected to. The proposal to tax 
the colonies directly by act of Parliament, however, 
seemed to the colonies, accustomed as they were to be 
taxed only by their representative assemblies, not only 
unwarranted but also highly dangerous. The purposes 
for which the proceeds of the new taxes were to be used, 
also, were not acceptable. The colonies had the tradi- 
tional English dread of a standing army, however small 
or apparently necessary, while the payment of the salaries 
of governors and judges from the imperial treasury 
instead of from the treasury of the colony would, it was 
feared, by increasing the independence of those officials, 
diminish their sense of responsibiHty to the people and 
enable them, if they chose, to override the wishes of the 
assemblies. 

There was no agreement among the colonies, however, 
as to the way in which the required revenue should be 
raised, while protests were made against the raising of the 
revenue at all. Grenville, accordingly, brought in and 
carried the Stamp Act. There were remonstrances from 
London merchants and protests from several of the 
colonial agents, but there was no effective opposition in 
Parliament. The estimated revenue from the act was 
^100,000. The dispatch to America of such troops as 



14 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

might be deemed necessary was further authorized, and 
a Quartering Act passed to provide for their accommo- 
dation. 

The attitude of the colonies was at first that of passive 
resistance, but before long the growing opposition led 
to numerous outbreaks of violence, directed particularly 
against the stamp distributers. In October, 1765, a 
Stamp Act Congress, representing nine colonies, met in 
New York and adopted resolutions declaring against the 
right of Parliament to tax the colonies without their con- 
sent. When the first of November, the date on which 
the act was to go into effect, arrived, there were no 
stamps to be had. Fortunately, events in England pre- 
pared the way for a repeal of an act that obviously could 
not be enforced. In July the Grenville ministry went out 
of office. Rockingham, who succeeded as prime min- 
ister, was friendly to America, and on the eighteenth of 
March, 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed. Accompany- 
ing the act of repeal, however, was a so-called Declara- 
tory Act, asserting the right of Parliament to bind the 
colonies by legislation in all cases whatsoever. 

Events were to show that the Declaratory Act was not, 
as many affected to believe, a mere empty assertion to 
save the dignity of Parliament. The repeal of the Stamp 
Act caused great rejoicing, but the political conditions in 
England were disquieting. Grenville and his followers 
refused to be reconciled, while George III, who had no- 
toriously interfered with his ministers during the debates 
on the repeal, was dissatisfied and chagrined. Rocking- 



Introduction 15 

ham was marked for removal, and in July was dismissed, 
a ministry headed by the Duke of Grafton succeeding, 
but with Pitt, whom the king had won by assurances and 
blandishments, as the real head of affairs. Virtuous as 
Pitt's own motives undoubtedly were, his course at this 
time has generally been regarded as the great mistake 
of his political career. 

Early in 1767 the landed gentry secured the passage 
of an act reducing the land tax. It was generally assumed 
that the deficiency of revenue thus caused would be made 
good from America. Pitt, now Earl of Chatham, was 
incapacitated by illness, and the actual control of minis- 
terial policy was assumed by Charles Townshend, who 
had already usurped it. Townshend brought forward 
four bills relating to America, all of which became law 
by the first of July. The first prohibited the New York 
Assembly from legislating until it had fully complied with 
the provisions of the Quartering Act. The second aimed 
to improve the colonial customs service. The third pro- 
posed to raise an American revenue by the imposition of 
import duties, the proceeds to be applied to paying the 
salaries of judicial and civil officers and defraying the 
expenses of defending the colonies. The estimated an- 
nual revenue from this act was ^^40,000. The fourth 
act reduced the duties on tea. Tov/nshend died before 
the acts went into effect, and the responsibility for their 
enforcement passed to his successor. 

The news of the passage of the Townshend acts revived 
in America the earnest discussion of the right of Parlia- 



1 6 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

ment to tax the colonies, which had been fir^ awakened 
by the Stamp Act. The first attempt to combat the acts 
was by means of agreements not to import the articles on 
which duties were laid, and to encourage domestic manu- 
factures. The Massachusetts House of Representatives 
went further, and in February, 1768, in a circular letter 
to the other colonies, entered its protest, in dignified but 
earnest language, against the claim to tax the colonies 
by parliamentary authority, and the proposed payment of 
judges and civil officers by the Crown. The repHes of the 
other colonies were favorable. When the circular letter 
became known in England, however, it was bitterly 
denounced, and Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State for 
the Colonies, in a letter to the colonial governors, called 
upop them to use their utmost influence to prevent its 
approval by the assemblies, and in case the assemblies 
persisted, to prorogue or dissolve them. The Massachu- 
setts House of Representatives was also called upon to 
rescind the resolution by which the circular letter was 
authorized. By a vote of 92 to 17 the House refused 
to rescind, whereupon the General Court was dissolved. 
Similar dissolutions took place also in other colonies. 

In September, 1768, two British regiments from Halifax 
arrived at Boston and were quartered in the town. On 
the fifteenth of December an address to the king was 
moved in the House of Lords, urging that immediate 
steps be taken to apprehend the persons responsible for 
the late disorders in Boston, — particularly those con- 
nected with the seizure of John Hancock's sloop Liberty 



Introduction 17 

for smugglfng, — with a view to sending them to England 
for trial, under the alleged authority of a statute passed 
in the reign of Henry VIII, for the trial of treasons com- 
mitted out of the kingdom. Nothing yet done or threat- 
ened so alarmed the colonies as this monstrous proposition. 
The Virginia House of Burgesses protested strongly against 
the proposed action as a flagrant violation of the right of 
Englishmen to be tried by a jury of the vicinage and 
according to the established course of the common law. 
For passing these resolutions the House was dissolved, 
but the members met and adopted a non-importation 
agreement. 

It was evident that the second attempt to tax America 
had failed. In April, 1769, Thomas Pownall, formerly 
governor of Massachusetts and now a member of Parlia- 
ment, showed that the receipts from the Revenue Act, 
which Townshend had estimated at ^40,000, had been 
for the first year less than ^16,000, of which all but ^295 
had been absorbed by the expenses of the new system of 
customs administration ; while the extraordinary military 
expenses in America for the same period amomited to 
^170,000. In January, 1770, the Grafton ministry fell, 
and Lord North, who was to pilot the affairs of England 
through the next twelve years of storm and stress, took 
the helm. In March the duties imposed by the Town- 
shend Revenue Act, except that on tea, were repealed, 
the duty on tea being retained as an assertion of the right 
of Parliament to tax the colonies — "a right," said North, 
" he would contend for to the last hour of his life." 

BURKE ON CONXII.IATIOX — 2 



1 8 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

The alarm and resentment of the colonies it the arbi- 
trary course of Parliament were greatly increased by the 
high-handed proceedings in the Wilkes case. John Wilkes, 
a " worthless demagogue," though a member of the House 
of Commons, had published in No. 45 of the North Briton 
a severe criticism of the royal address transmitting to 
Parliament the treaty of Paris, in 1763. A general war- 
rant was issued for the apprehension of all persons con- 
cerned in the publication of the offensive newspaper. 
Wilkes, pleading his privilege as a member of Parliament, 
was released, and the court shortly declared general war- 
rants illegal ; but the House voted No. 45 a libel, and 
Wilkes was expelled. A coarse poem written by Wilkes 
was also voted a libel and a breach of privilege by the 
House of Lords. Wilkes fled to the Continent, and in 
February, 1764, was outlawed. In 1768, however, he 
returned, and in the general election of that year came 
forward as a champion of parliamentary reform. Though 
still an outlaw, the voters of Middlesex returned him to 
Parliament. The old sentence of outlawry was set aside 
by Lord Mansfield as illegal, but Wilkes was immediately 
arrested under the old charge of libel, and sentenced to 
imprisonment for twenty-two months and a fine of ^1000. 
Further, the House of Commons again expelled him. 
The voters of Middlesex immediately reelected him, but 
the House set the election aside as invalid. A third 
election' gave Wilkes an overwhelming majority of the 
votes, but the Commons seated his opponent. A grave 
constitutional question, involving the right of the House 



Introduction 19 

of Commons to ride roughshod over the electors, was 
thus raised. Petitions poured into the House, and Wilkes, 
now a popular hero, was chosen an alderman of London. 
These events, clearly indicative of the arbitrary temper 
of Parliament and king, were closely followed in America, 
where they coincided with the opposition to the Town- 
shend acts ; and the sympathy of the colonists was shown 
by the addresses and presents which they sent to Wilkes 
in prison. 

The two or three years following the repeal of the 
Townshend Revenue Act saw a general subsidence of the 
excitement in America. The Boston massacre, in March, 
1770, greatly imbittered popular feehng for a time in 
Massachusetts, and made that colony more than ever the 
leader of the colonial resistance; but with reasonable 
moderation on the part of the colonies and the exercise 
of common sense on the part of the king and his minis- 
ters, the outlook was unquestionably favorable to peace. 
In 1773, however, all the slumbering ill-feeling and irri- 
tation between Massachusetts and the mother country 
was suddenly fanned into flame by the publication of the 
Hutchinson letters. Some letters written by Hutchinson, 
before he became governor of Massachusetts, but while 
he was occupying other important poHtical offices, to a 
private correspondent in England, fell into the hands of 
Franklin. The letters, " written with the perfect freedom 
of confidential intercourse,"^ contained passages reflect- 
ing on the motives and aims of the popular leaders in 
1 Lecky, vol. iv, p. 413. 



20 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

Massachusetts, and expressing the hope that the connec- 
tion between the colonies and Great Britain might not be 
broken. Frankhn, who at once saw the pohtical impor- 
tance of the letters, sent them to Massachusetts with the 
stipulation that the)^ should not be printed and should 
be eventually returned. Notwithstanding the stipulation, 
however, the letters were published. The Massachusetts 
House of Representatives shortly petitioned for Hutchin- 
son's recall. In England, where the tide was now setting 
strongly against America, Franklin, who had taken pains 
to defend his part in the transaction, was dismissed from 
his^ofifice of postmaster-general for North America. 

( The climax of colonial opposition, short of open war, 
was reached in the resistance, during the fall of 1773, to 
the importation of tea through the agency of the East 
India Company. Here, as before, resistance was based, 
not on the amount of the tax, but on the principle which 
the payment of any tax levied on the colonies by author- 
ity of Parliament involved.' English public opinion, im- 
perfectly aware of the merits of the dispute, but tired of 
colonial disorder on the one hand and ministerial vacilla- 
tion on the other, was in favor of compeUing the turbulent 
colonies to submit. Naturally Massachusetts, as the chief 
offender, was now selected as the chief victim, j^etween 
the last of March and the end of June, 1774, three drastic 
coercive acts were passed. The Boston Port Act closed 
the port of Boston to commerce, save in foods, and trans- 
ferred the customs business to Salem. The Massachusetts 
Government Act so altered the charter of the colony as 



Introduction 21 

to provide for the appointment of councillors and judicial 
officers by the governor, and the choice of jurors by the 
sheriff^, while town meetings, save for the election of offi- 
cers and sheriffs, were interdicted. The Administration 
of Justice Act provided for the trial in England or in 
another colony of any person indicted in Massachusetts 
for murder or other capital crime because of some act 
committed by him in the enforcement of law, in case 
a fair trial could not be had in Massachusetts. A 
new Quartering Act was also passed " to facilitate the 
establishment of a temporary military government in 
Am erica.' "^^ 

The Boston Port Act went into effect on the first day 
of June. On the seventeenth, the Massachusetts House 
of Representatives issued a call for a congress of the col- 
onies, to meet in Philadelphia on the first of September. 
Delegates from twelve colonies appeared in response to 
the summons. Petitions to the king and the people of 
Great Britain, and a declaration of the rights and griev- 
ances of the colonies were drawn up, and an agreement, 
known as the " Association," pledging the signers to 
nearly complete commercial non-intercourse with Great 
Britain, was adopted. In Massachusetts, events moved 
rapidly toward the inevitable crisis. The General Court 
having been dissolved, a provincial congress was formed 
in its stead, and by common consent assumed direction 
of affairs. Arms and military supplies were collected and 
the militia organized. Similar preparations for forcible 
resistance, should that prove necessary, were made in 



22 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

other colonies, while committees of correspondence were 
unceasingly active in stimulating public sentiment and 
organizing opposition. 

In September, 1774, while the aspect of American 
affairs was gravely serious, Parliament was dissolved. The 
result of the general election was a virtually complete in- 
dorsement of the king and the ministerial policy. The 
new Parliament met on the thirtieth of November, but for 
some weeks nothing of importance was done. Then, on 
the nineteenth of January, 1775, ^^^ petition to the king 
drawn up by the Continental Congress, together with volu- 
minous papers relating to affairs in the colonies, was laid 
before Parhament. Although a majority of the members 
were undoubtedly opposed to America and its claims, 
the American cause at once found earnest and eloquent 
advocates. The Earl of Chatham brought forward a plan 
of concihation, and defended it in a great speech, but the 
bill was not even accorded a second reading. An address 
pledging support to the king in his efforts to put down 
the rebellion was agreed to, notwithstanding the protest 
of eighteen lords. On the tenth of February Lord North 
moved for leave to bring in a bill to restrain the trade 
and commerce of the New England colonies to Great 
Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies. By a vote of 261 
to 85 the motion was carried, and on the eighth of March 
the bill passed the House of Commons without a division. 

It was on the twenty-second of March, while the New 
England Restraining Bill was before the lords, that Burke, 
who had already protested against the Restraining Bill, 



Introduction 23 

moved in the House of Commons a series of resolutions, 
in whose support he made his great speech on Concilia- 
tion with America. 



II. The Early Life of Burke 

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin, probably on the 
twelfth of January, 1729. In 1743 he entered Trinity 
College, taking his bachelor's degree there five years later. 
He' seems to have read a good deal during vids college 
days, but otherwise his career as a student was not dis- 
tinguished. The details of his life for the next few years 
are obscure, but he went to London in 1750 and began 
the study of law, though he was never called to the bar. 
A literary life had strong attractions for him, superior, 
apparently, to those of the legal profession, but of the 
particular direction of his studies we know nothing. In 
the winter of 1756 he married. 

Burke's first essays in authorship were his Vindication 
of Natural Society and A Philosophical Inquiry into the 
Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, both 
published in 1756. These were followed by an Account 
of the European Settlements in Amei'ica, not, probably, 
entirely of his own composition. In 1759 began the 
publication of the Annual Register, to which Burke for 
many years contributed the account of political events. 

In 1 761 Burke accompanied Hamilton, secretary to 
Lord Halifax, to Ireland in some official capacity, and 
in 1763 was granted a pension of ;£"3oo a year from the 



24 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

Irish treasury ; but his refusal to devote the whole of his 
time to his patron led him, at the expiration of two years, 
to relinquish both office and emoluments. When Rock- 
ingham became prime minister, however, in 1765, Burke 
became his private secretary, and the friendship thus 
formed continued throughout Rockingham's hfe. Just 
before the end of the year he obtained a seat in the 
House of Commons. In the discussion of American 
affairs then going on Burke at once took part, and two 
speeches which he made in favor of the repeal of the 
Stamp Act and the passage of the Declaratory Act 
attracted much attention, and won high commendation 
from Pitt and Dr. Johnson. It should be noted that 

/ Burke's opposition to the Stamp Act was based, not on 

a denial of the right of Parliament to tax the colonies, 

I but on the ground that it was inexpedient to assert the 

V right under the circumstances. From this position Burke 

* never departed. 

In the great excitement over the Middlesex election 
Burke championed the cause of Wilkes, as he did the 
cause of the printers who were proceeded against for 
reporting the debates of the House of Commons. As a 
pohtician he was active in his efforts to keep together the 
so-called Rockingham Whigs, ^' the most upright, con- 
sistent and disinterested body of men then in public 
life." ^ A pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Cause of 
the Present Discontents, published in 1770, reviewed in 
a masterly way the whole course of policy which had 

1 Morley, B?irke, p. 62. 



Introduction 25 

brought about the existing disordered conditions. In 

1 771 Burke was made colonial agent for New York. In 

1772 he was urged to go out to India as head of a com- 
mission to examine the affairs of the East India Com- 
pany, of which he had been one of the proprietors, but 
he declined. The next year he went to France, where 
he had exceptional opportunities to observe at first hand 
some of the social and intellectual conditions out of 
which sprang the French Revolution. 

In the general election of 1774, Burke was at first 
chosen for the small borough of Malton, but was shortly 
returned from Bristol, then the second city in commercial 
importance in England. For the next eight years he was 
allied with Fox in opposition to the policy of Lord North, 
the prime minister. On the nineteenth of April, 1774, 
while the proposed repeal of the tea duty was under dis- 
cussion, Burke, in a great speech on American Taxation, 
urged the repeal of the duty. A repeal would not, he 
argued, lead to demands from the colonies for further 
concessions, nor was the preamble of the Townshend 
Revenue Act, which declared it to be " expedient " that 
a revenue should be raised in America, an obstacle to 
repeal. He pointed out also that Hillsborough's letter to 
the governors was a surrender, in the name of the king 
and the ministry, of the principle of taxing the colonies, 
and he reviewed at length the history of American tax- 
ation. The effect of the speech upon those who heard 
it was very great. The public, however, were not ad- 
mitted to the House to hear the debate, and did not 



i6 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

have the text of the speech until its pubhcation by 
Burke about a year later. 



III. The Speech on Conciliation 

The speech on Conciliation, following so soon after 
the speech on American taxation, might naturally be 
expected to repeat much of what had been already said. 
On the contrary, however, it is a new and fresh treatment 
of the American situation, arguing with consummate 
force of logic, rhetoric, and eloquence, but in a temperate 
and conciliatory tone, the claims of the colonies to a 
share in the privileges and spirit of the British constitu- 
tion. Later speeches, particularly the speech on the 
Nabob of Arcot's Debts, contain descriptive passages of 
greater vividness, but in logical skill, rhetorical finish, 
effective grouping of facts, mingled simplicity and or- 
nateness of style, winning manner, and fervent appeal, 
the speech on Conciliation marks a perfection beyond 
which Burke did not go. 

The speech falls naturally into four parts. In the first, 
or introductory section, Burke, after noting the serious- 
ness of the question before the House and the varying 
attitude of Parliament from time to time toward it, pro- 
poses to bring about peace by the simple plan of removing 
the existing grounds of difference. Such action, indeed, 
it is pointed out, is foreshadowed by the action of the 
House in accepting Lord North's resolution, and is 
justified on the broad ground that England, as the greater 



I 



Introduction 27 

power, ought to be the first to offer concessions. The 
two leading questions before the House, therefore, are, 
first, whether there ought to be concession, and, second, 
what the concession ought to be. The determination of 
these questions depends, not upon abstract ideas of right 
or general theories of government, but upon the particu- 
lar nature and circumstances of America. 

With this introduction, Burke enters upon an account 
of the present condition of America, particularly as re- 
gards its population, its trade, its agriculture, its fisheries, 
and the character of its people. It will be noted that, 
disregarding strict logical arrangement, the vivid descrip- 
tion of American character is preceded by an argumenta- 
tive passage against the use of force — a passage whose 
more logical place would be in connection with the third 
part of the speech. 

The ground having been thus prepared, Burke then 
comes directly to the main question of how to deal with 
America. He points out that the spirit which prevails 
in the colonies can be dealt with in but three ways : first, 
changing the spirit by removing its causes ; second, prose- 
cuting it as criminal ; and third, yielding to it as neces- 
sary, that is, giving up the pretended right of taxation. 
The first is difficult, if not impossible. The second is 
either impracticable or inexpedient. The third, there- 
fore, is necessary, and the only one which will satisfy 
colonial complaints. It is further pointed out that such 
concession will not lead to demands for others, and 
will be based on historical precedents which show its 



28 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

practicability, and stamp the present position of the 
ministry as erroneous. 

In conclusion, the resolutions embodying the plan 
already set forth are submitted, their provisions dis- 
cussed in detail, the objections to them answered, and 
Lord North's plan criticised by comparison. 

The speech on Conciliation affords a good illustration 
of Burke's political creed and his characteristics as a 
writer. Burke reckoned himself a Whig, as the term was 
then understood in England, but his political opinions 
were such as would class him now as a Conservative. It 
must be remembered that in the latter part of the eigh- 
teenth century it was the Tories, and not the Whigs, who 
were the progressive or reform party in England. Burke, 
who always insisted that he was politically consistent, 
favored reform, but not such as would endanger the 
ancient constitution of the government. He abhorred 
abstract theories and *' metaphysical generalities " in 
politics, and insisted that the guiding question for the 
statesman ought to be, not so much whether a proposed 
action was right in law, as whether it was expedient. 
For democracy, in the usual eighteenth century sense, 
he had no liking, and never ceased to denounce its pre- 
tensions. At the same time, his enormous wealth of 
political information gave to his outlook a broader range 
than that of most of his contemporaries, and led him to 
trust the general sense of mankind as more reliable than 
the opinions of the moment. 

To the student who approaches Burke's speeches for 



Q 



Introduction 



29 



the first time, their most striking Hterary characteristic is 
Hkely to seem their conversational style. "They have 
always the air of a spoken appeal from man to man." ^ 
As compared with the fashion of the present day, the 
style is formal, with here and there a rhetorical ornate- 
ness which would now be thought extravagant and over- 
done.^ Burke represents, however, a period of transition 
from the formality of the early eighteenth century to the 
greater naturalness of the nineteenth ; and while his 
rhetoric, like his thought, is often gorgeous or grand, it 
is pervadingly natural and suited to the subject. The 
preference for particular rather than general terms,^ the 
skillful alternation of short and long sentences,'' the nu- 
merous and carefully contrived figures of speech,^ the 
frequent literary allusions, especially to the Bible and the 
Greek and Latin classics, and in general the union 
of forcibleness, naturalness, and comprehensiveness with 
brevity and compactness,^ are further characteristics of 
which the speech on Conciliation affords numerous illus- 
trations. 

1 Burke, Select Works, edited by Payne, I, xxxiii. 

2 Eg. the reference to Lord Bathurst, p. 51. 

^ E.g. the passage beginning "In large bodies the circulation of 
power," p. 64, and the description of the political condition of Ireland, 
pp. 87, 88. 

4 E.g. the paragraphs beginning, " First, the people of the colonies," 
p. 58. and, " Secondly, it is an experiment," p. 115. 

s Eg. the account of Ireland, pp. 87, 88, and the passage beginning, 
" For that service, for all service," p, 124. 

6 Tlie passage beginning, "Sir, here is the repeated acknowledg- 
ment," p. 103, is a good specific illustration of this general quality. 



JO Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

On the other hand, while Burke was a great orator, he 
was not a great debater, nor did his speeches carry con- 
viction to those who heard them as forcibly as they did 
to those who read them. " The heavy Quaker-like figure, 
the scratch wig, the round spectacles, the cumbrous roll 
of paper which loaded Burke's pocket," ^ were not pre- 
possessing. Some of the members of the House styled 
him the " dinner-bell," and the speech on Conciliation, 
according to Erskine, emptied the House, though every- 
body read it afterward. His intense earnestness, im- 
passioned manner, awkward gestures, and pronounced 
Irish brogue, coupled with not the best of temper under 
opposition or criticism, often, especially in his later years, 
weakened the effect of what he said. At the same time, 
it must be remembered that the oratory of Burke was of 
a kind to which the House of Commons was not accus- 
tomed, and which violated the time-honored traditions of 
public speaking, so that it was not wholly unnatural that 
the unfamiliar manner should have tended to obscure the 
wisdom of what was being said. 

IV. Burke's Subsequent Career 

Burke's subsequent career, though of the highest im- 
portance in the history of the time, must be briefly 
sketched. The speeches on America had established 
Burke's reputation as an orator and a statesman, and 
thereafter whatever he said or wrote was sure of attention 

1 Green, Short History, p. 770. 



Introduction 31 

even from those who, at the moment, preferred not to 
listen to his speeches. Consistent opposition to the 
poUcy of the ministry in deaHng with America led him in 
1776, together with others of his party, to absent himself 
from the House when American affairs were under dis- 
cussion ; and in a notable Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol 
he defended his course. In February, 1778, however, he 
made a great speech against the employment of Indians 
in the war with the colonies. In 1780 he championed 
the cause of economical reform, with the object not only 
of reducing expenditures, but also of so reforming the 
civil service as to put a stop to the political corruption 
through which the House of Commons was still largely 
controlled. His support of the claims of Ireland to 
more liberal commercial treatment, however, offended his 
Bristol constituency, and in the election of 1780 he was 
defeated. Through the influence of Rockingham he 
was shortly returned from Malton. When Rockingham 
succeeded North as prime minister, in 1782, Burke was 
made paymaster of the forces, but the death of Rocking- 
ham and the elevation of Shelburne brought about a dis- 
ruption of the Whig party, for which Burke was largely 
responsible. His excessive vehemence in debate in- 
creased, and annoying interruptions in the House were 
frequent. 

The formation of the Coalition ministry, in 1783, 
brought again into office North, Fox, and Burke. A bill 
for administrative reform in India was defended by Burke 
in one of his greatest speeches, but to no purpose. The 



32 Burke's Speech on Conciliation 

Coalition ministry had no hold on the people, and gave 
way at the end of 1783 to that of William Pitt, who con- 
tinued prime minister until 1804. In 1785, in a speech 
on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts, Burke began the attack 
on the administration of the East India Company which 
culminated in the charges of impeachment against War- 
ren Hastings. The trial opened in 1788, and after drag- 
ging along for seven years, resulted in a verdict of acquittal 
by the House of Lords. In the meantime he had pub- 
lished, in 1790, his Reflections on the French Revolution, 
in which he attacked the revolution, its principles and 
leaders, with the utmost vehemence, and pointed out the 
evils which he was convinced must flow from the spread 
or adoption of the democratic ideas which underlay it. 
The book had, for the time, an enormous sale, and was 
eagerly read even by the many who wholly dissented from 
its views. The Reflections is, in many respects, Burke's 
greatest intellectual achievement; its criticisms of the 
revolutionary programme as that programme was formu- 
lated in 1790 were not only sound, but abundantly borne 
out by the event ; but Burke's view of the revolution as a 
political rather than a social movement, together with his 
insufficient knowledge of the subject, distorted his esti- 
mate of the more general and fundamental issues involved. 
The work divided public opinion in England, seriously 
injured the Whigs, and created a strong reaction against 
revolutionary ideas. 

Burke continued to write on French affairs, but although 
he was still a great figure and a great name, his political 



Introduction ^3 

influence had much declined. In 1791, in a dramatic 
scene, he broke finally with Fox and his party, and stood 
alone. High ideals, broad views, and generous impulses 
had given way to invective, personal denunciation, and 
extravagant declamation. An Appeal from the New to 
the Old JVhigs sought to bring back the party to its old 
position ; but the Letters on a Regicide Peace, written to 
urge England to push with energy the w^ar with France 
begun in 1793, while showing examples of Burke's finest 
manner, have been justly characterized as " deplorable." ^ 
But the end was near. The death of his only son, in 
1794, was a blow from which Burke never recovered. 
He survived the loss a little less than three years, dying 
on the ninth of July, 1797, in his sixty-eighth year. 

1 Morley, Burke, p. 199. 



BURKE ON CONCILTATION — ^ 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

v 
Editions of Burke's writings were published in Boston, 
in 1839, in 9 volumes; in London, in 1852 and 1898, 
in 8 and 12 volumes, respectively; and in Bohn's 
British Classics, 1855-64, in 8 volumes. An edition 
of his Select IVorks, in 3 volumes, edited by E. J. 
Payne, is published in the Clarendon Press Series; 
this edition has an elaborate introduction and valuable 
notes. The Speech on Conciliation has been several 
times published separately during the past ten years in 
annotated school editions. 

The best compact biography of Burke is that by John 
Morley in the English Men of Letters series. The same 
author's Edmund Burke: An Historical Study is of 
great value. The article *' Burke " in the Dictionary of 
National Biography, Vol. VII, by William Hunt, is of the 
first importance for the details of Burke's life. The ear- 
lier biographies by Prior (1854, 2 vols.) and Macknight 
(1858-60, 3 vols.) are larger and less critical, but have 
not been superseded. 



34 



SPEECH 



OF 



EDMUND BURKE, ESQ. 



ON 



Moving his Resolutions 



FOR 



Conciliation with the Colonies 

March 22, 1775 



THE SECOND EDITION 



LONDON 
PRINTED FOR J. DODSLEY, IN PALL-MALL 

MDCCLXXV 



SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH 
AMERICA 

I HOPE, Sir, that notwithstanding the austerity of the 
Chair, your good nature will incline you to some degree 
of indulgence towards human frailty. You will not think 
it unnatural that those who have an object depending^ 
which strongly engages their hopes and fears should be 5 
somewhat inclined to superstition. As I came into the 
House, full of anxiety about the event ^ of my motion, I 
found, to my infinite surprise, that the grand penal bill 
by which we had passed sentence on the trade and sus- 
tenance of America is to be returned to us from the other 10 
House. I do confess, I could not help looking on this 
event as a fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of 
providential favor by which we are put once more in pos- 
session of our deliberative capacity, upon a business so 
very questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its 15 
issue. By the return of this bill, which seemed to have 
taken its flight forever, we are at this very instant nearly 
as free to choose a plan for our American government 
as we were on the first day of the session. If, Sir, we 

1 Pending. 2 Result. 



38 Speech on Conciliation 

incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all em- 
barrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by 
any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We 
are therefore called upon, as it were by a superior warn- 
5 ing voice, again to attend to America ; to attend to the 
whole of it together ; and to review the subject wilh an 
unusual degree of care and calmness. 

Surely it is an awful subject, or there is none so on 
this side of the grave. When I first had the honor of a 

10 seat in this House, the affairs of that continent pressed 
themselves upon us as the most important and most deli- 
cate^ object of parliamentary attention. My little share 
in this great deliberation oppressed me. I found myself 
a partaker in a very high trust ; and having no sort of 

15 reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for 
the proper execution of that trust, I was obliged to take 
more than common pains to instruct myself in everything 
which relates to our colonies. I was not less under the 
necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the gen- 

2oeral policy of the British Empire. Something of this sort 
seemed to be indispensable, in order, amidst so vast a 
fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre- my 
thoughts, to ballast my conduct, to preserve me from be- 
ing blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. 

25 1 really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh prin- 
ciples to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive 
from America. 

At that period I had the fortune to find myself in per- 
1 Requiring care or tact. ^ Concentrate. 



Speech on Conciliation 39 

feet concurrence with a large majority in this House. 
Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with 
the sharpness and strength of that early impression, I 
have continued ever since, without the least deviation, in 
my original sentiments. Whether this be owing to an 5 
obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious ^ adher- 
ence to what appears to me truth and reason, it is in your 
equity^ to judge. 

Sir, Parliament, having an enlarged view of objects, 
made, during this interval, more frequent changes in 10 
their sentiments and their conduct than could be justified 
in a particular person upon the contracted scale of private 
information. But though I do not hazard anything ap- 
proaching to a censure on the motives of former Par- 
liaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted, 15 
— that under them the state of America has been kept in 
continual agitation. Everything administered as remedy 
to the public complaint;^ if it did not produce, was at 
least followed by, an heightening of the distemper; until 
by a variety of experiments that important country has 20 
been brought into her present situation — a situation 
which I will not miscall, which I dare not name, which I 
scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any 
description. 

In this posture. Sir, things stood at the beginning of the 25 
session. About that time a worthy member* of great 
parliamentary experience, who in the year 1766 filled the 

1 Conscientious. ^ Impartiality. 

8 Disease. * Rose Fuller, 



40 Speech on Conciliation 

Chair of the American Committee with much abiHty, 
took me aside and, lamenting the present aspect of our 
politics, told me things were come to such a pass that our 
former methods of proceeding in the House would be no 
5 longer tolerated; that the public tribunal (never too in- 
dulgent to a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now 
scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity ; that the 
very vicissitudes and shiftings of ministerial measures, 
instead of convicting their authors of inconstancy and 

10 want of system, would be taken as an occasion of charg- 
ing us with a predetermined discontent which nothing 
could satisfy, whilst we accused ^ every measure of vigor 
as cruel, and every proposal of lenity as weak and irreso- 
lute. The public, he said, would not have patience to 

15 see us play the game out with our adversaries ; we must 
produce our hand : it would be expected that those who 
for many years had been active in such affairs should 
show that they had formed some clear and decided idea 
of the principles of colony government, and were capable 

20 of drawing out something like a platform- of the ground 
which might be laid for future and permanent tranquillity. 
I felt the truth of what my honorable friend repre- 
sented; but I felt my situation too. His application 
might have been made with far greater propriety to many 

25 other gentlemen. No man was, indeed, ever better dis- 
posed or worse qualified for such an undertaking than 
myself. Though I gave so far into^ his opinion that I 
immediately threw my thoughts into a sort of parliamen- 
1 Arraigned. ^ Plan, outline. ^ Acquiesced in. 



1 



Speech on Conciliation 41 

tary form, I was by no means equally ready to produce^ 
them. It generally argues some degree of natural impo- 
tence of mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, 
to hazard plans of government except from a seat of 
authority. Propositions are made, not only ineffectually, 5 
but somewhat disreputably,^ when the minds of men are 
not properly disposed for their reception ; and for my 
part, I am not ambitious of ridicule, not absolutely a 
candidate for disgrace. 

Besides, Sir, to speak the plain truth, I have in general 10 
no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper ^ govern- 
ment, nor of any politics in which the plan is to be wholly 
separated from the execution. But when I saw that 
anger and violence prevailed every day more and more, 
and that things were hastening towards an incurable ahen- 13 
ation of our colonies, I confess my caution gave way. I 
felt this as one of those few moments in which decorum 
yields to a higher duty. Public calamity is a mighty 
leveller ; and there are occasions when any, even the 
slightest, chance of doing good must be laid hold on 20 
even by the most inconsiderable person. 

To restore order and repose to an empire so great and 
so distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an under- 
taking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius 
and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest under- 25 
standing. Strugghng a good wfiile with these thoughts, 

1 Give expression to. 

2 With injury to the reputati<3h of those who make them. 
^Agreed upon, but not carried into effect; hence, theoretical. 



42 speech on Conciliation 

by degrees I felt myself more firm. I derived, at length, 
some confidence from what in other circumstances usually 
produces timidity. I grew less anxious, even from the 
idea of my own insignificance. For judging of what you 

5 are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that you 
would not reject a reasonable proposition, because it had 
nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other 
hand, being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, 
natural or adventidous, I was very sure that if my propo- 

losition were futile or dangerous, if it were weakly con- 
ceived or improperly timed, there was nothing exterior 
to it, of power to awe, dazzle or delude you. You will 
see it just as it is, and you will treat it just as it deserves. 
The proposition is peace. Not peace through the 

15 medium of war ; not peace to be hunted through the 
labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations ; not peace 
to arise out of universal discord fomented from principle 
in all parts of the empire ; not peace to depend on the 
juridical^ determination of perplexing questions, or the 

20 precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex 
government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural 
course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sough- -.n 
the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. 
I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and 

25 by restoring the fo7'mer tinsuspecting confidence of the 
colonies in the mother country, to give permanent satis- 
faction to your people ; and (far from a scheme of ruling 
by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same 
1 Purely legal. 



Speech on Conciliation 43 

act and by the bond of the very same interest which 
reconciles them to British government. 

My idea is nothing more. Refined^ policy ever has 
been the parent of confusion, and ever will be so as 
long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which 5 
is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely 
detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the 
government of mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is 
an healing and cementing principle. My plan, therefore, 
being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable, 10 
may disappoint some people when they hear it. It has 
nothing to recommend it to the pruriency- of curious 
ears. There is nothing at all new and captivating in it. 
It has nothing of the splendor of the project which has 
been lately laid upon your table by the noble lord in the 15 
blue ribbon. It does not propose to fill your lobby with 
squabbling colony agents, who will require the interposi- 
tion of your mace at every instant to keep the peace 
amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent 
auction of finance, where captivated provinces come to 20 
general ransom by bidding against each other, until you 
knock down the hammer, and determine a proportion of 
payments beyond all the powers of algebra to equalize 
and settle. 

The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, 25 

however, one great advantage from the proposition and 

registry of that noble lord's project. The idea of con- 

cihation is admissible. First, the House, in accepting 

1 Elaborate. 2 Desire, in the bad sense. 



44 Speech on Conciliation 

the resolution moved by the noble lord, has admitted, 
notwithstanding the menacing front ^ of our address, not- 
withstanding our heavy bill of pains and penalties, that 
we do not think ourselves precluded from all ideas of 
5 free grace and bounty. 

The House has gone farther : it has declared concilia- 
tion admissible, p7'evious to any submission on the part 
of America. It has even shot a good deal beyond that 
mark, and has admitted that the complaints of our former 

10 mode of exerting the right of taxation were not wholly 
unfounded. That right thus exerted is allowed to have 
something reprehensible in it, something unwise or some- 
thing grievous; since, in the midst of our heat and resent- 
ment, we of ourselves have proposed a capital - alteration ; 

15 and, in order to get rid of what seemed so very excep- 
tionable, have instituted a mode that is altogether new, 
— one that is, indeed, wholly alien from all the ancient 
methods and forms of Parliament. 

The principle of this proceeding is large enough for 

20 my purpose. The means proposed by the noble lord 
for carrying his ideas into execution, I think, indeed, are 
very indifferently suited to the end ; and this I shall en- 
deavor to show you before I sit down. But, for the pres- 
ent, I take my ground" on the admitted principle. I mean 

25 to give peace. Peace implies reconcihation ; and where 
there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does 
in a manner always imply concession on the one part or 

1 Appearance. ^ Of the first importance. 

^ Stand. * Real, as opposed to formal. 



Speech on Conciliation 45 

on the other. In this state of things I make no difficulty 
in affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us. 
Great and acknowledged force is not impaired, either in 
effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself. 
The superior power may offer peace with honor and with 5 
safety. Such an offer from such a power will be attributed 
to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are 
the concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, 
he is wholly at the mercy of his superior ; and he loses 
forever that time and those chances which, as they hap- 10 
pen to all men, are the strength and resources of all 
inferior power. 

The capital leading questions on which you must this 
day decide are these two : first, whether you ought to 
concede; and secondly, what your concession ought 15 
to be. On the first of these questions we have gained 
(as I have just taken the liberty of observing to you) 
some ground. But I am sensible^ that a good deal more 
is still to be done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to deter- 
mine both on the one and the other of these great ques- 20 
tions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may 
be necessary to consider distincdy the true nature and 
the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have 
before us : because after all our struggle, whether we will 
or not, we must govern America according to that nature 25 
and to those circumstances, and not according to our own 
imaginations, not according to abstract ideas of right ; by 
no means according to mere general theories of govern- 
1 Aware. 



46 Speech on Conciliation 

merit, the resort to which appears to me in our present 
situation no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore 
endeavor, with your leave, to lay before you some of the 
most material of these circumstances in as full and as clear 

5 a manner as I am able to state them. 
d The first thing that we have to consider with regard to 
the nature of the object is the number of people in the 
colonies. I have taken for some years a good deal of 
pains on that point. I can by no calculation justify my- 

10 self in placing the number below two millions of inhab- 
itants of our own European blood and color, besides at 
least 500,000 others who form no inconsiderable part 
of the strength and opulence of the whole. This, Sir, is, 
I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion 

15 to exaggerate where plain truth is of so much weight and 
importance. But whether I put the present numbers too 
high or too low is a matter of little moment. Such is 
the strength with which population shoots in that part 
of the world, that, state the numbers as high as we will, 

20 whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. 
Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are 
grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating 
on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we 
have millions more to manage. Your children do not 

25 grow faster from infancy to manhood, than they spread 
from families to communities, and from villages to nations. 
I put this consideration of the present and the grow- 
ing numbers in the front of our deliberation, because. 
Sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter 



Speech on Conciliation 47 

discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, con- 
tracted, pinched, occasional^ system will be at all suit- 
able to such an object. It will show you that it is not 
to be considered as one of those minima - which are out 
of the eye and consideration of the law ; not a paltry 5 
excrescence of the state ; not a mean dependent, who 
may be neglected with little damage and provoked with 
httle danger. It will prove that some degree of care and 
caution is required in the handling such an object ; it 
will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so 10 
large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human 
race. You could at no time do so without guilt ; and 
be assured you will not be able to do it long with 
impunity. 

But the population of this country, the great and 15 
growing population, though a very important consider- 
ation, will lose much of its weight, if not combined with 
other circumstances. The commerce of your colonies 
is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the 
people. This ground of their commerce, indeed, has 20 
been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by 
a distinguished person" at your bar. This gentleman, 
after thirty-five years, — it is so long since he first ap- 
peared at the same place to plead for the commerce 
of Great Britain, — has come again before you to plead 25 
the same cause, without any other effect of time than 
that to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition 

1 Special, designed for the occasion. 
2 Trifles. ^ Richard Glover. 



48 Speech on Conciliation 

which even then marked him as one of the first hterary 
characters of his age, he has added a consummate knowl- 
edge in the commercial interest of his country, formed 
by a long course of enlightened and discriminating 
5 experience. 

Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a 
person with any detail, if a great part of the members 
who now nil the House had not the misfortune to be 
absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I 

10 propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat 
different from his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of 
view from whence, if you will look at this subject, it is 
impossible that it should not make an impression upon 
you. 

15 I have in my hand two accounts : one a comparative 
state ^ of the export trade of England to its colonies, 
as it stood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 
1772 ; the other a state of the export trade of this coun- 
try to its colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared 

20 with the whole trade of England to all parts of the world 
(the colonies included) in the year 1704. They are 
from good vouchers : the latter period from the accounts 
on your table, the earlier from an original manuscript of 
Davenant, who first established the Inspector-General's 

25 office, which has been ever since his time so abundant 
a source of parliamentary information. 

The export trade to the colonies consists of three 
great branches : the African, which, terminating almost 
1 Statement. 



Speech on Conciliation 49 

wholly in the colonies, must be put to the account of their 
commerce ; the West Indian ; and the North American. 
All these are so interwoven that the attempt to separate 
them would tear to pieces the contexture ^ of the whole ; 
and, if not entirely destroy, would very much depreciate 5 
the value of all the parts. I therefore consider these 
three denominations - to be, what in effect they are, 
one trade. 

The trade to the colonies, taken on the export side, at 
the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1 704, 10 
stood thus : — 

Exports to North America and the West Indies ;^483,265 
To Africa 86,665 

;^569,930 

In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year 15 
between the highest and lowest of those lately laid on 
your table, the account was as follows : — 

To North America and the West Indies . . ;^4,79 1,734 

To Africa 866,398 

To which if you add the export trade from 20 

Scotland, which had in 1704 no existence 364,000 



^6,022,132 

PVom five hundred and odd thousand it has grown to 
six millions. It has increased no less than twelvefold. 
This is the state of the colony trade, as compared with 25 

1 Construction, arrangement. ^ Classes. 

BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 4 



50 Speech on Conciliation 

itself at these two periods within this century ; and this is 
matter for meditation. But this is not all. Examine my 
second account. See how the export trade to the colo- 
nies alone in 1772 stood in the other point of view, that 
5 is, as compared to the whole trade of England in 1704 : — 

The whole export trade of England, including 

that to the colonies, in 1704 ;i^6,509,ooo 

Export to the colonies alone in 1772 . . . 6,024,000 

Difference .... ;^485,ooo 

10 The trade with America alone is now within less than 
^500,000 of being equal to what this great commercial 
nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this 
century with the whole world ! If I had taken the 
largest year of those on your table, it would rather have 

15 exceeded. But, it will be said, is not this American 
trade an unnatural protuberance that has drawn the juices 
from the rest of the body? The reverse. It is the very 
food that has nourished every other part into its present 
magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly aug- 

20 mented, and augmented more or less in almost every 
part to which it ever extended, but with this material 
difference, that of the six millions which in the be- 
ginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our 
export commerce, the colony trade was but one-twelfth 

25 part; it is now (as a part of sixteen millions) consider- 
ably more than a third of the whole. This is the relative 
proportion of the importance of the colonies at these two 
periods : and all reasoning concerning our mode of treat- 



Speech on Conciliation 51 

ing them must have this proportion as its basis ; or it is a 
reasoning weak, rotten and sophistical. 

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over 
this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. 
We stand where we have an immense view of what is, 5 
and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and liarkness rest 
upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend 
from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our 
national prosperity has happened within the short period 
of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight 10 
years. There are those alive whose memory might 
touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord 
Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. 
He was in 1 704 of an age at least to be made to com- 
prehend such things. He was then old enough acta 15 
parentiim jam legei'c, et quae sit pote7'it cognoscere virtus. 
Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious^ youth, 
foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the 
most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of 
his age, had opened to him in vision, that when in the 20 
fourth generation the third prince of the House of 
Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that 
nation which (by the happy issue of moderate and heal- 
ing counsels) was to be made Great Britain, he should 
see his son. Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the 25 
current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise 
him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the 
family with a new one ; — if, amidst these bright and 
^ Fortunate. 



52 speech on Conciliation 

happy scenes of domestic honor and prosperity, that 
angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the 
rising glories of his country, and, whilst he was gazing 
with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of 
5 England, the genius should point out to him a little 
speck, scarcely visible in the mass of the national interest, 
a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and 
should tell him, — "Young man, there is America, which 
at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with 

10 stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, 
before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of 
that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. 
Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive 
increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of 

15 people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing 
settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you 
shall see as much added to her by America in the course 
of a single life ! " If this state of his country had been 
foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine 

20 credulity of youth and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm 

to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to 

see it ! Fortunate indeed, if he lives to see nothing that 

shall vary the prospect and cloud the setting of his day ! 

Excuse me. Sir, if, turning from such thoughts, I 

25 resume this comparative view once more. You have 
seen it on a large scale ; look at it on a small one. I 
will point out to your attention a particular instance of it 
in the single province of Pennsylvania. In the year 
1704 that province called for ;£"i 1,459 in value of your 



Speech on Conciliation ^^ 

commodities, native and foreign. This was the whole. 
What did it demand in 1772 ? Why, nearly fifty times as 
much ; for in that year the export to Pennsylvania was 
^507,909, nearly equal to the export to all the colonies 
together in the first period. 5 

I choose, Sir, to enter into these minute and particular 
details, because generalities, which in all other cases 
are apt to heighten and raise the subject, have here a 
tendency to sink it. When we speak of the commerce 
with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is 10 
unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren. 

So far, Sir, as to the importance of the object in 
the view of its commerce, as concerned in the exports 
from England. If I were to detail the imports, I could 
show how many enjoyments they procure which deceive ^ 15 
the burden of life, how many materials which invigorate 
the springs of national industry, and extend and animate 
every part of our foreign and domestic commerce. This 
would be a curious^ subject indeed, — but I must pre- 
scribe bounds to myself in a matter so vast and various. 20 

I pass, therefore, to the colonies in another point 
of view, — their agriculture. This they have prosecuted 
with such a spirit that, besides feeding plentifully their 
own growing multitude, their annual export of grain, 
comprehending rice, has some years ago exceeded a 25 
million in value. Of their last harvest, I am persuaded, 
they will export much more. At the beginning of the 
century some of these colonies imported corn from the 
1 Lighten. 2 Interesting. 



54 Speech on Conciliation 

mother country. For some time past the Old World has 
been fed from the New. The scarcity which you have 
felt would have been a desolating famine if this child 
of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman 

5 charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuber- 
ance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. 

As to the wealth which the colonies have drawn from 
the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully 
opened at your bar. You surely thought those acquisi- 

lotions of value, for they seemed even to excite your envy; 
and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment 
has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have 
raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, Sir, what 
in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and 

15 look at the manner in which the people of New England 
have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we 
follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and 
behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses 
of Hudson Bay and Davis Strait, whilst we are looking 

20 for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they 
have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that 
they are at the antipodes and engaged under the frozen 
Serpent of the south. Falkland Islar. i, which seemed too 
remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national 

25 ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress 
of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat 
more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter 
of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them 
draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of 



speech on Conciliation 55 

Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic 
game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is 
vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness 
to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland nor 
the activity of France nor the dexterous and firm sagacity 5 
of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous 
mode of hardy ^ industry to the extent to which it has 
been pushed by this recent people — a people who are 
still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened 
into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these 10 
things ; when I know that the colonies in general owe 
little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are 
not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of 
watchful and suspicious government, but that through a 
wise and salutary neglect a generous - nature has been 15 
suffered to take her own way to perfection; — when I 
reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they 
have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and 
all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances 
melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. 1 20 
pardon something to the spirit of liberty.^ 

I am sensible, Sir, that all which I have asserted in my 
detail is admitted in the gross, but that quite a different 
conclusion is drawn from it. America, gentlemen say, is 
a noble object; it is an object well worth fighting for. 25 
Certainly it is, if fighting a people be the best way of 
gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to 
their choice of means by their complexions^ and their 

1 Bold, 2 Active, high-spiiited. ^ Temperaments. 



^6 Speech on Conciliation 

habits. Those who understand the miUtary art will of 
course have some predilection for it. Those who wield 
the thunder of the state may have more confidence in the 
efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of 
Sethis knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of 
prudent management than of force, — considering force 
not as an odious, but a feeble, instrument for preserving 
a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited 
as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with 

loUS. 

First, Sir, permit me to observe that the use of force 
alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, 
but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again ; 
and a nation is not governed which is perpetually to be 

15 conquered. 

My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not 
always the effect of force, and an armament is not a 
victory. If you do not succeed, you are without re- 
source : for conciliation failing, force remains ; but force 

20 failing, no further hope of reconciliation is left. Power 
and authority are sometimes bought by kindness, but 
they can never be begged as arms by an impoverished 
and defeated violence. 

A further objection to force is that you impair the object 

25 by your very endeavors to preserve it. The thing you 
fought for is not the thing which you recover, but de- 
preciated, sunk, wasted and consumed in the contest. 
Nothing less will content me than ivhole Ajnerica. I do 
not choose to consume its strength along with our own ; 



Speech on Conciliation 57 

because in all parts it is the British strength that I con- 
sume. I do not choose to be caught by a foreign enemy 
at the end of this exhausting conflict, and still less in 
the midst of it. I may escape, but I can make no in- 
surance against such an event. Let me add that I do 5 
not choose wholly to break the American spirit ; because 
it is the spirit that has made the country. 

Lastly, we have no sort of experience in favor of force 
as an instrument in the rule of our colonies. Their 
growth and their utility have been owing to methods alto- 10 
gether different. Our ancient indulgence has been said 
to be pursued to a fault. It may be so ; but we know, if 
feeling is evidence, that our fault was more tolerable than 
our attempt to mend it, and our sin far more salutary 
than our penitence. 15 

These, Sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that 
high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, 
for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great 
respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is 
still behind a third consideration concerning this object, 20 
which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of 
policy which ought to be pursued in the management of 
America, even more than its population and its commerce : 
I mean its temper and cha7'acter. 

In this character of the Americans a love of freedom is 25 
the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes 
the whole : and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, 
your colonies become suspicious, restive and untractable, 
whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them 



58 Speech on Conciliation 

by force or shuffle from them by chicane what they think 
the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of 
liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than 
in any other people of the earth; and this from a great 
5 variety of powerful causes, which, to understand the true 
temper of their minds and the direction which this spirit 
takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more 
largely. 

First, the people of the colonies are descendants of 

10 Englishmen. England, Sir, is a nation which still, I hope, 
respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colo- 
nists emigrated from you when this part of your character 
was most predominant ; and they took this bias and 
direction the moment they parted from your hands. 

15 They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to 
liberty according to English ideas and on English prin- 
ciples. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is 
not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible ob- 
ject ; and every nation has formed to itself some favorite 

20 point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion 
of their happiness. It happened, you know. Sir, that the 
great contests for freedom in this country were from the 
earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most 
of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned 

25 primarily on the right of election of magistrates or on the 
balance among the several orders of the state. The 
question of money was not with them so immediate. But 
in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the 
ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exer- 



Speech on Conciliation 59 

cised, the greatest spirits have acted and suffered. In 
order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the im- 
portance of this point, it was not only necessary for those 
who in argument defended the excellence of the English 
Constitution to insist on this privilege of granting money 5 
as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had 
been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind 
usages to reside in a certain body called a House of Com- 
mons. They went much farther : they attempted to 
prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be 10 
so, from the particular nature of the House of Commons 
as an immediate representative of the people, whether 
the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They 
took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, 
that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, 15 
mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting 
their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. 
The colonies draw from you, as with their life-blood, 
these ideas and principles. Their love of liberty, as with 
you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing. 20 
Liberty might be safe or might be endangered in twenty 
other particulars without their being much pleased or 
alarmed. Here they felt its pulse ; and as they found 
that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do 
not say whether they were right or wrong in applying 25 
your general arguments to their own case. It is not easy, 
indeed, to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. 
The fact is that they did thus apply those general 
arguments ; and your mode of governing them, whether 



6o Speech on Conciliation 

through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, 
confirmed them in the imagination that they, as well as 
you, had an interest in these common principles. 

They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by 
5 the form of their provincial legislative assemblies. Their 
governments are popular in an high degree : some are 
merely popular ; in all the popular representative is the 
most weighty ; and this share of the people in their ordi- 
nary government never fails to inspire them with lofty 

lo sentiments and with a strong aversion from whatever 
tends to deprive them of their chief importance. 

If anything were wanting to this necessary operation 
of the form of government, religion would have given 
it a complete effect. Religion, always a principle of 

15 energy, in this new people is no way worn out or 
impaired ; and their mode of professing it is also one 
main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protest- 
ants, and of that kind which is the most adverse to all 
implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a 

20 persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon 
it. I do not think, Sir, that the reason of this averse- 
ness in the dissenting churches from all that looks like 
absolute government is so much to be sought in their 
religious tenets as in their history. Every one knows 

25 that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with 
most of the governments where it prevails ; that it has 
generally gone hand in hand with them, and received 
great favor and every kind of support from authority. 
The Church of England too was formed from her cradle 



Speech on Conciliation 6i 

under the nursing care of regular government. But the 
dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition 
to all the ordinary powers of the world, and could justify 
that opposition only on a strong claim to natural liberty. 
Their very existence depended on the powerful and un- 5 
remitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even 
the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the 
religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a 
refinement on the principle of resistance : it is the dis- 
sidence of dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant 10 
religion. This religion, under a variety of denomina- 
tions agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the 
spirit of Hberty, is predominant in most of the northern 
provinces, where the Church of England, notwithstand- 
ing its legal rights, is in reality no more than a sort of 15 
private sect, not composing^ most probably the tenth of 
the people. The colonists left England when this spirit 
was high, and in the emigrants was the highest of all; 
and even that stream of foreigners which has been con- 
stantly flowing into these colonies has, for the greatest 20 
part, been composed of dissenters from the establishments^ 
of their several countries, and have brought with them a 
temper and character far from alien to that of the people 
with whom they mixed. 

Sir, I can perceive by their manner that some gentle- 25 

men object to the latitude^ of this description, because 

in the southern colonies the Church of England forms 

a large body and has a regular establishment. It is 

1 Comprising. 2 State churches. ^ Scope, 



62 Speech on Conciliation 

certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance at- 
tending these colonies which, in my opinion, fully 
counterbalances this difference and makes the spirit of 
liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the 

5 northward. It is, that in Virginia and the Carolinas 
they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the 
case in any part of the world, those who are free are by 
far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Free- 
dom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a kind of 

10 rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in 
countries where it is a common blessing and as broad 
and general as the air, may be united with much abject 
toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, 
liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more 

15 noble and liberal. I do not mean. Sir, to commend the 
superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as 
much pride as virtue in it ; but I cannot alter the nature 
of man. The fact is so ; and these people of the south- 
ern colonies are much more strongly and with a higher 

20 and more stubborn spirit attached to liberty than those 
to the northward. Such were all the ancient common- 
wealths ; such were our Gothic ancestors ; such in our 
days were the Poles ; and such will be all masters of 
slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people 

25 the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit 
of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible. 

Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in 
our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards 
the growth and effect of this untractable spirit : I mean 



Speech on Conciliation 6;^ 

their education. In no country perhaps in the world is 
the law so general a study. The profession itself is 
numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes 
the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to 
the Congress were lawyers. But all who read (and most 5 
do read) endeavor to obtain some smattering in that 
science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller that 
in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular 
devotion, were so many books as those on the law ex- 
ported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen 10 
into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear 
that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's C(?m- 
mentaries in America as in England. General Gage 
marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on 
your table. He states that all the people in his govern- 15 
ment are lawyers or smatterers in law, and that in Boston 
they have been enabled by successful chicane wholly 
to evade many parts of one of your capital penal con- 
stitutions.^ The smartness of debate will say that this 
knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights 20 
of legislature, their obligations to obedience and the 
penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my 
honorable and learned friend on the floor,^ who con- 
descends to mark what I say for animadversion, will dis- 
dain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when 25 
great honors and great emoluments do not win over this 
knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable 
adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and 
1 Enactments. ^ The Attorney-General. 



64 Speech on Conciliation 

broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and 
litigious. Abeicnt stiidia hi mores. This study renders 
men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready 
in defence, full of resources. In other countries the 
5 people, more simple and of a less mercurial cast, judge of 
an ill principle in government only by an actual griev- 
ance ; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the 
pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle; 
They augur misgovernment at a distance and snuff the 

10 approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze. 

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies 
is hardly less powerful than the rest, as it is not merely 
moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of things. 
Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and 

15 them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this 
distance in weakening government. Seas roll and months 
pass between the order and the execution ; and the want 
of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to 
defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged minis- 

20 ters of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces 
to the remotest verge of the sea. But there a power 
steps in that limits the arrogance of raging passions and 
furious elements, and says, " So far shalt thou go, and no 
farther." Who are you, that you should fret and rage, 

25 and bite the chains of Nature ? Nothing worse happens 
to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire ; 
and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be 
thrown. In large bodies the circulation of power must 
be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. 



Speech on Conciliation 6^ 

The Turk cannot govern Egypt and Arabia and Kurdistan 
as he governs Thrace ; nor has he the same dominion in 
Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. 
Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The 
sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with 5 
a loose rein, that he may govern at all ; and the whole 
of the force and vigor of his authority in his centre is 
derived from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. 
Spain in her provinces is perhaps not so well obeyed as 
you are in yours. She complies, too ; she submits ; she 10 
watches times. This is the immutable condition, the 
eternal law, of extensive and detached empire. 

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources : of descent, 
of form of government, of religion in the northern prov- 
inces, of manners in the southern, of education, of the 15 
remoteness of situation from the first mover of govern- 
ment, — from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty 
has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the peo- 
ple in your colonies, and increased with the increase of 
their wealth : a spirit that, unhappily meeting with an 20 
exercise of power in England, which, however lawful, is 
not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with 
theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us. 

I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this 
excess or the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps a 25 
more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in 
them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas 
of liberty might be desired more reconcilable with an 
arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might 

BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 5 



66 Speech on Conciliation 

wish the colonists to be persuaded that their Hberty is 
more secure when held in trust for them by us, as their 
guardians during a perpetual minority, than with any part 
of it in their own hands. The question is not whether 
5 their spirit deserves praise or blame, but what, in the 
name of God, shall we do with it ? You have before 
you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, with all 
its imperfections on its head. You see the magnitude, 
the importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. 

10 By all these considerations we are strongly urged to de- 
termine something concerning it. We are called upon 
to fix some rule and line for our future conduct, which 
may give a litde stability to our politics and prevent the 
return of such unhappy deliberations as the present. 

15 Every such return will bring the matter before us in a 
still more untractable form. For what astonishing and 
incredible things have we not seen already ! What 
monsters have not been generated from this unnatural 
contention ! Whilst every principle of authority and 

20 resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as 
it would go, there is nothing so sohd and certain, either 
in reasoning or in practice, that has not been shaken. 
Until very lately all authority in America seemed to be 
nothing but an emanation from yours. Even the popular 

25 part of the colony constitution derived all its activity, and 
its first vital movement, from the pleasure of the crown. 
We thought. Sir, that the utmost which the discontented, 
colonists could do was to disturb authority ; we never 
dreamt they could of themselves supply it, knowing in 



Speech on Conciliation 67 

general what an operose business it is to establish a gov- 
ernment absolutely new. But having for our purposes in 
this contention resolved that none but an obedient assem- 
bly should sit, the humors of the people there, finding all 
passage through the legal channel stopped, with great 5 
violence broke out another way. Some provinces have 
tried their experiment, as we have tried ours ; and theirs 
has succeeded. They have formed a government suffi- 
cient for its purposes, without the bustle of a revolution 
or the troublesome formality of an election. Evident 10 
necessity and tacit consent have done the business in an 
instant. So well they have done it that Lord Dun more 
(the account is among the fragments on your table) tells 
you that the new institution is infinitely better obeyed 
than the ancient government ever was in its most fortu- 15 
nate periods. Obedience is what makes government, and 
not the names by which it is called : not the name of 
governor, as formerly, or committee, as at present. This 
new government has originated directly from the people, 
and was not transmitted through any of the ordinary 20 
artificial media of a positive constitution. It was not a 
manufacture ready formed, and transmitted to them in 
that condition from England. The evil arising from 
hence is this : that the colonists having once found the 
possibility of enjoying the advantages of order in the 25 
midst of a struggle for liberty, such struggles will not 
henceforward seem so terrible to the settled and sober 
part of mankind as they had appeared before the trial. 
Pursuing the same plan of punishing, by the denial of 



68 Speech on Conciliation 

the exercise of government, to still greater lengths, we 
wholly abrogated the ancient government of Massachu- 
setts. We were confident that the first feeling, if not the 
very prospect, of anarchy, would instantly enforce a com- 
5 plete submission. The experiment was tried. A new, 
strange, unexpected face of things appeared. Anarchy 
is found tolerable. A vast province has now subsisted, 
and subsisted in a considerable degree of health and 
vigor, for near a twelvemonth, without governor, without 

10 public council, without judges, without executive magis- 
trates. How long it will continue in this state, or what 
may arise out of this unheard-of situation, how can the 
wisest of us conjecture ? Our late experience has taught 
us that many of those fundamental principles formerly 

15 believed infallible are either not of the importance they 
were imagined to be, or that we have not at all adverted 
to some other far more important and far more power- 
ful principles, which entirely overrule those we had con- 
sidered as omnipotent. I am much against any further 

20 experiments which tend to put to the proof any more 
of these allowed opinions which contribute so much to 
the public tranquilKty. In effect, we suffer as much at 
home by this loosening of all ties and this concussion^ 
of all established opinions, as we do abroad. For, in 

25 order to prove that the Americans have no right to 
their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert 
the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own. 
To prove that Americans ought not to be free, we are 

1 Shaking. 



Speech on Conciliation 69 

obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and 
we never seem to gain a paltry advantage over them in 
debate, without attacking some of those principles, or 
deriding some of those feehngs, for which our ancestors 
have shed their blood. 5 

But, Sir, in wishing to put an end to pernicious 
experiments, I do not mean to preclude the fullest 
inquiry. Far from it. Far from deciding on a sudden 
or partial view, I would patiently go round and round 
the subject, and survey it minutely in every possible 10 
aspect. Sir, if I were capable of engaging you to an 
equal attention, I would state that, as far as I am capable 
of discerning, there are but three ways of proceeding 
relative to this stubborn spirit which prevails in your 
colonies and disturbs your government. These are : to 15 
change that spirit, as inconvenient, by removing the 
causes ; to prosecute it as criminal ; or to comply with it 
as necessary. I would not be guilty of an imperfect 
enumeration ; I can think of but these three. Another 
has indeed been started, that of giving up the colonies ; 20 
but it met so slight a reception that I do not think 
myself obliged to dwell a great while upon it. It is 
nothing but a little sally of anger, like the frowardness 
of peevish children, who, when they cannot get all they 
would have, are resolved to take nothing. 25 

The first of these plans, to change the spirit, as incon- 
venient, by removing the causes, I think is the most 
like a systematic proceeding. It is radical in its princi- 
ple j but it is attended with great difficulties, some of 



yo Speech on Conciliation 

them little short, as I conceive, of impossibilities. This 
will appear by examining into the plans which have been 
proposed. 

As the growing population in the colonies is evidently 

5 one cause of their resistance, it was last session men- 
tioned in both Houses by men of weight, and received 
not without applause, that in order to check this evil, 
it would be proper for the crown to make no further 
grants of land. But to this scheme there are two objec- 

10 tions. The first, that there is already so much unsettled 
land in private hands as to afford room for an immense 
future population, although^ the crown not only withheld 
its grants, but annihilated its soil. If this be the case, 
then the only effect of this avarice of desolation, this 

15 hoarding of a royal wilderness, would be to raise the 
value of the possessions in the hands of the great private 
monopolists, without any adequate check to the growing 
and alarming mischief of population. 

But if you stopped your grants, what would be the 

20 consequence ? The people would occupy without grants. 
They have already so occupied in many places. You 
cannot station garrisons in every part of these deserts. 
If you drive the people from one place, they will carry 
on their annual tillage and remove with their flocks and 

25 herds to another. Many of the people in the back 
settlements are already little attached to particular situ- 
ations. Already they have topped the Appalachian 
Mountains. From thence they behold before them an 
1 Even though. 



speech on Conciliation 71 

immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow, a square 
of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander 
without a possibility of restraint; they would change 
their manners with the habits of their life ; would soon 
forget a government by which they were disowned ; 5 
would become hordes of English Tartars, and pouring 
down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irre- 
sistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and 
your counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and of 
all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and 10 
in no long time must, be the effect of attempting to for- 
bid as a crime, and to suppress as an evil, the command 
and blessing of Providence, " Increase and multiply." 
Such would be the happy result of an endeavor to keep 
as a lair of wild beasts that earth which God, by an 15 
express charter, has given to the children of men. Far 
different and surely much wiser has been our policy 
hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every 
kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have 
invited the husbandman to look to authority for his title. 20 
We have taught him piously to believe in the mysterious 
virtue of wax and parchment. We have thrown each 
tract of land, as it was peopled, into districts, that the 
ruling power should never be wholly out of sight. We 
have settled all we could, and we have carefully attended 25 
every settlement with government. 

Adhering, Sir, as I do, to this policy, as well as for the 
reasons I have just given, I think this new project of hedg- 
ing-in population to be neither prudent nor practicable. 



72 Speech on Conciliation 

To impoverish the colonies in general, and in par- 
ticular to arrest the noble course of their marine enter- 

• prises, would be a more easy task. I freely confess 
it. We have showi\ a disposition to a system of this 
5 kind, — a disposition even to continue the restraint after 
the offence, looking on ourselves as rivals to our colonies, 
and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they 
shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do. The 
power inadequate to all other things is often more than 

10 sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and 
immediate power of the colonies to resist our violence as 
very formidable. In this, however, I may be mistaken. 
But when I consider that we have colonies for no pur- 
pose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor 

15 understanding a little preposterous to make them un- 
serviceable in order to keep them obedient. It is, in 
truth, nothing more than the old and, as I thought, ex- 
ploded ^ problem of tyranny, which proposes to beggar its 
subjects into submission. But remember, when you have 

20 completed your system of impoverishment, that Nature 
still proceeds in her ordinary course ; that discontent 
will increase with misery ; and that there are critical 
moments in the fortune of all states, when they who 
are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may be 

25 strong enough to complete your ruin. Spoliatis a7'ma 
supers unt. 

The temper and character which prevail in our 
colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. 
1 Discredited. 



speech on Conciliation 73 

We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce peo- 
ple and persuade them that they are not sprung from a 
nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. 
The language in which they would hear you tell them 
this tale would detect the imposition ; your speech would 5 
betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on 
earth to argue another Enghshman into slavery. 

I think it is nearly as little in our power to change their 
republican rehgion as their free descent, or to substitute 
the Roman Catholic as a penalty, or the Church of 10 
England as an improvement. The mode of inquisition 
and dragooning is going out of fashion in the Old World, 
and I should not confide much to their ef^cacy in the 
New. The education of the Americans is also on the 
same unalterable bottom^ with their religion. You 15 
cannot persuade them to burn their books of curious - 
science, to banish their lawyers from their courts of 
laws, or to quench the lights of their assemblies by re- 
fusing to choose those persons who are best read in their 
privileges. It would be no less impracticable to think of 20 
wholly annihilating the popular assemblies in which these 
lawyers sit. The army, by which we must govern in 
their place, would be far more chargeable ^ to us ; not 
quite so effectual; and perhaps in the end full as difficult 
to be kept in obedience. 25 

With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia 
and the southern colonies, it has been proposed, I know, 
to reduce it by declaring a general enfranchisement of 
^ Foundation. "^ Mysterious, occult. ^ Costly. 



74 Speech on Conciliation 

their slaves. This project has had its advocates and pane- 
gyrists ; yet I never could argue myself into any opinion 
of it. Slaves are often much attached to their masters. 
A general wild offer of liberty would not always be 
5 accepted. History furnishes few instances of it. It is 
sometimes as hard to persuade slaves to be free as it is 
to compel freemen to be slaves ; and in this auspicious 
scheme we should have both these pleasing tasks on our 
hands at once. But when we talk of enfranchisement, 

10 do we not perceive that the American master may 
enfranchise too, and arm servile hands in defence of 
freedom? — a measure to which other people have had 
recourse more than once, and not without success, in 
a desperate situation of their affairs. 

15 Slaves as these unfortunate black people are, and dull 
as all men are from slavery, must they not a little suspect 
the offer of freedom from that very nation which has sold 
them to their present masters? from that nation, one of 
whose causes of quarrel with those masters is their refusal 

20 to deal any more in that inhuman traffic? An offer of 
freedom from England would come rather oddly, shipped 
to them in an African vessel, which is refused an entry 
into the ports of Virginia or Carolina, with a cargo of three 
hundred Angola negroes. It would be curious to see the 

25 Guinea captain attempting at the same instant to publish 
his proclamation of liberty and to advertise his sale of 
slaves. 

But let us suppose all these moral difficulties got over. 
The ocean remains. You cannot pump this dry ; and as 



Speech on Conciliation 75 

long as it continues in its present bed, so long all the 
causes which weaken authority by distance will continue. 

Ye gods, annihilate but space and time, 
And make two lovers happy ! 

was a pious and passionate prayer, but just as reasonable 5 
as many of the serious wishes of very grave and solemn 
politicians. 

If then. Sir, it seems almost desperate to think of any 
alterative course for changing the moral causes (and not 
quite easy to remove the natural) which produce preju- 10 
dices irreconcilable to the late exercise of our authority, 
but that the spirit infallibly will continue ; and continuing, 
will produce such effects as now embarrass us, — the 
second mode under consideration is to prosecute that 
spirit in its overt acts as criininal. 15 

At this proposition I must pause a moment. The 
thing seems a great deal too big for my ideas of juris- 
prudence. It should seem, to my way of conceiving such 
matters, that there is a very wide difference in reason and 
policy between the mode of proceeding on the irregular 20 
conduct of scattered individuals, or even of bands of men, 
who disturb order within the state, and the civil dissensions 
which may, from time to time, on great questions, agitate 
the several communities which compose a great empire. 
It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the 25 
ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public 
contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an in- 
dictment against a whole people. I cannot insult and 



76 Speech on Conciliation 

ridicule the feelings of millions of my fellow-creatures, as 
Sir Edward Coke insulted one excellent individual (Sir 
Walter Raleigh) at the bar. I am not ripe to pass 
sentence on the gravest public bodies, entrusted with 
5 magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged 
with the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very same 
title that I am. I really think that for wise men this is 
not judicious ; for sober men, not decent ; for minds 
tinctured ^ with humanity, not mild and merciful. 

10 Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea of an empire 
as distinguished from a single state or kingdom. But my 
idea of it is this : that an empire is the aggregate of 
many states under one common head, whether this head 
be a monarch or a presiding republic. It does in such 

15 constitutions frequently happen (and nothing but the 
dismal, cold, dead uniformity of servitude can prevent its 
happening) that the subordinate parts have many local 
privileges and immunities. Between these privileges and 
the supreme common authority the line may be extremely 

2onice.^ Of course disputes — often, too, very bitter dis- 
putes — and much ill blood will arise. But though every 
privilege is an exemption (in the case) from the ordinary 
exercise of the supreme authority, it is no denial of it. 
The claim of a privilege seems rather, ex vi tejinini, to 

25 imply a superior power ; for to talk of the privileges of a 

state or of a person who has no superior is hardly any 

better than speaking nonsense. Now in such unfortunate 

quarrels among the component parts of a great political 

^ Imbued. 2 Fine, difficult to see. 



Speech on Conciliation 77 

union of communities, I can scarcely conceive anything 
more completely imprudent than for the head of the 
empire to insist that, if any privilege is pleaded against 
his will or his acts, [that] his whole authority is denied ; 
instantly to proclaim rebeUion, to beat to arms, and to 5 
put the offending provinces under the ban. Will not this. 
Sir, very soon teach the provinces to make no distinction 
on their part ? Will it not teach them that the govern- 
ment against which a claim of liberty is tantamount to 
high treason is a government to which submission is 10 
equivalent to slavery? It may not always be quite con- 
venient to impress dependent communities with such 
an idea. 

We are, indeed, in all disputes with the colonies, by 
the necessity of things, the judge. It is true. Sir. 15 
But I confess that the character of judge in my own 
cause is a thing that frightens me. Instead of filhng me 
with pride, I am exceedingly humbled by it. I cannot 
proceed with a stern, assured, judicial confidence, until 
I find myself in something more like a judicial character. 20 
I must have these hesitations as long as I am compelled 
to recollect that, in my little reading upon such contests 
as these, the sense of mankind has at least as often de- 
cided against the superior as the subordinate power. 
Sir, let me add, too, that the opinion of my having some 25 
abstract right in my favor would not put me much at my 
ease in passing sentence, unless I could be sure that there 
were no rights which, in their exercise under certain cir- 
cumstances, were not the most odious of all wrongs and 



yS Speech on Conciliation 

the most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these considera- 
tions have great weight with me, when I find things so 
circumstanced that I see the same party at once a civil 
htigant against me in point of right and a culprit before 

5 me, while I sit as a criminal judge on acts of his, whose 
moral quality is to be decided upon the merits of that 
very litigation. Men are every now and then put, by 
the complexity of human affairs, into strange situations ; 
but justice is the same, let the judge be in what situation 

10 he will. 

There is, Sir, also a circumstance which convinces me 
that this mode of criminal proceeding is not (at least in 
the present stage of our contest) altogether expedient ; 
which is nothing less than the conduct of those very 

15 persons who have seemed to adopt that mode, by 
lately declaring a rebellion in Massachusetts Bay, as 
they had formerly addressed^ to have traitors brought 
hither, under an act of Henry the Eighth, for trial. For 
though rebellion is declared, it is not proceeded against 

20 as such ; nor have any steps been taken towards the 
apprehension or conviction of any individual offender, 
either on our late or our former address ; but modes of 
public coercion have been adopted, and such as have 
much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility 

25 towards an independent power than the punishment of 
rebellious subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent ; 
but it shows how difficult it is to apply these juridical 
ideas to our present case. 

1 Petitioned. 



speech on Conciliation 79 

In this situation, let us seriously and coolly ponder. 
What is it we have got by all our menaces, which have 
been many and ferocious? What advantage have we 
derived from the penal laws we have passed, and which, 
for the time, have been severe and numerous? What 5 
advances have we made towards our object, by the 
sending of a force which, by land and sea, is no contemp- 
tible strength? Has the disorder abated? Nothing 
less. When I see things in this situation, after such 
confident hopes, bold promises and active exertions, 10 
I cannot for my life avoid a suspicion that the plan itself 
is not correctly ^ right. 

If, then, the removal of the causes of this spirit 
of American liberty be for the greater part, or rather 
entirely, impracticable ; if the ideas of criminal process 15 
be inapplicable, or, if applicable, are in the highest de- 
gree inexpedient; what way yet remains? No way is 
open but the third and last, — to comply with the Ameri- 
can spirit as necessary ; or, if you please, to submit to it 
as a necessary evil. 20 

If we adopt this mode, if we mean to conciliate and 
concede, let us see of what nature the concession ought 
to be. To ascertain the nature of our concession, we 
must look at their complaint. The colonies complain 
that they have not the characteristic mark and seal of25 
British freedom. They complain that they are taxed in 
a Parliament in which they are not represented. If you 
mean to satisfy them at all, you must satisfy them with 
1 Exactly. 



8o Speech on Conciliation 

regard to this complaint. If you mean to please any 
people, you must give them the boon which they ask, — 
not what you may think better for them, but of a kind 
totally different. Such an act may be a wise regulation, 
5 but it is no concession ; whereas our present theme is the 
mode of giving satisfaction. 

Sir, I think you must perceive that I am resolved this 
day to have nothing at all to do with the question of 
the right of taxation. Some gentlemen startle,^ but it 

lo is true ; I put it totally out of the question. It is less 
than nothing in my consideration. I do not indeed won- 
der, nor will you. Sir, that gentlemen of profound learn- 
ing are fond of displaying it on this profound subject. 
But my consideration is narrow, confined, and wholly 

15 hmited to the policy of the question. I do not examine 
whether the giving away a man's money be a power ex- 
cepted and reserved out of the general trust of govern- 
ment, and how far all mankind, in all forms of polity, 
are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of 

20 Nature ; or whether, on the contrary, a right of taxation 
is necessarily involved in the general principle of legisla- 
tion and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power. 
These are deep questions, where great names militate 
against each other, where reason is perplexed, and an 

25 appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion : for 
high and reverend authorities Hft up their heads on both 
sides, and there is no sure footing in the middle. This 
point is the great 

1 Are startled. 



Speech on Conciliation 8i 

Serbonian bog, 
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
Where armies whole have sunk. 

I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though 
in such respectable company. The question with me is, 5 
not whether you have a right to render your people mis- 
erable, but whether it is not your interest to make them 
happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but 
what humanity, reason and justice tell me I ought to do. 
Is a pohtic act the worse for being a generous one? Is 10 
no concession proper but that which is made from your 
want of right to keep what you grant ? Or does it lessen 
the grace or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an 
odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full 
of titles and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce 15 
them ? What signify all those titles and all those arms ? 
Of what avail are they, when the reason of the thing 
tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my 
suit, and that I could do nothing but wound myself by 
the use of my own weapons ? 20 

Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity 
of keeping up the concord of this empire by a unity of 
spirit, though in a diversity of operations, that if I were 
sure the colonists had at their leaving this country 
sealed a regular compact of servitude, that they had 25 
solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens, that they had 
made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and 
their posterity to all generations ; yet I should hold 
myself obliged to conform to the temper I found univer- 

BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 6 



82 Speech on Conciliation 

sally prevalent in ray own day, and to govern two million 
of men, impatient of servitude, on the principles of free- 
dom. I am not determining a point of law ; I am 
restoring tranquillity ; and the general character and 

5 situation of a people must determine what sort of govern- 
ment is fitted for them. That point nothing else can or 
ought to determine. 

My idea, therefore, without considering whether we 
yield as matter of right or grant as matter of favor, is 

\oto admit the people of our colonies into an interest in the 
Constitution ; and by recording that admission in the 
journals of Parliament, to give them as strong an assur- 
ance as the nature of the thing will admit, that we mean 
forever to adhere to that solemn declaration of systematic 

15 indulgence. 

Some years ago, the repeal of a revenue act, upon its 
understood principle, might have served to show that we 
intended an unconditional abatement ^ of the exercise 
of a taxing power. Such a measure was then sufficient 

20 to remove all suspicion and to give perfect content. But 
unfortunate events since that time may make something 
further necessary ; and not more necessary for the satis- 
faction of the colonies than for the dignity and con- 
sistency of our own future proceedings. 

25 I have taken a very incorrect measure of the disposi- 
tion of the House, if this proposal in itself would be 
received with dislike. I think. Sir, we have few Ameri- 
can financiers. But our misfortune is, we are too acute ; 
1 Suspension. 



speech on Conciliation 83 

we are too exquisite^ in our conjectures of the future, 
for men oppressed with such great and present evils. 
The more moderate among the opposers of parliamen- 
tary concession freely confess that they hope no good 
from taxation ; but they apprehend the colonists have 5 
further views, and if this point were conceded, they 
would instantly attack the trade laws. These gentlemen 
are convinced that this was the intention from the begin- 
ning, and the quarrel of the Americans with taxation 
was no more than a cloak and cover to this design. 10 
Such has been the language, even of a gentleman^ of 
real moderation and of a natural temper well adjusted to 
fair and equal government. I am, however. Sir, not a 
little surprised at this kind of discourse whenever I hear 
it ; and I am the more surprised on account of the argu- 15 
ments which I constantly find in company with it, and 
which are often urged from the same mouths and on the 
same day. 

For instance, when we allege that it is against reason 
to tax a people under so many restraints in trade as the 20 
Americans, the noble lord in the blue ribbon^ shall tell 
you that the restraints on trade are futile and useless, of 
no advantage to us, and of no burden to those on whom 
they are imposed ; that the trade to America is not 
secured by the Acts of Navigation, but by the natural 25 
and irresistible advantage of a commercial preference. 

Such is the merit of the trade laws in this posture 

1 Careful, detailed, 2 George Rice. 

3 Lord North. 



84 Speech on Conciliation 

of the debate. But when strong internal circumstances 
are urged against the taxes ; when the scheme is dis- 
sected ; when experience and the nature of things are 
brought to prove, and do prove, the utter impossibihty 

5 of obtaining an effective revenue from the colonies ; — 
when these things are pressed, or rather press theui- 
selves, so as to drive the advocates of colony taxes to a 
clear admission of the futility of the scheme ; then, Sir, 
the sleeping trade laws revive from their trance, and this 

10 useless taxation is to be kept sacred, not for its own sake, 
but as a counterguard and security of the laws of trade. 
Then, Sir, you keep up revenue laws which are mis- 
chievous in order to preserve trade laws that are useless. 
Such is the wisdom of our plan in both its members. 

15 They are separately given up as of no value ; and yet 
one is always to be defended for the sake of the other. 
But I cannot agree with the noble lord, nor with the 
pamphlet from whence he seems to have borrowed these 
ideas, concerning the inutihty of the trade laws ; for with- 

20 out idolizing them, I am sure they are still in many ways 
of great use to us, and in former times they have been 
of the greatest. They do confine, and they do greatly 
narrow, the market for the Americans. But my perfect 
conviction of this does not help me in the least to dis- 

25 cern how the revenue laws form any security whatsoever 
to the commercial regulations ; or that these commercial 
regulations are the true ground of the quarrel ; or that 
the giving way in any one instance of authority is to lose 
all that may remain unconceded. 



Speech on Conciliation 85 

One fact is clear and indisputable : the public and 
avowed origin of this quarrel was on taxation. This 
quarrel has indeed brought on new disputes on new ques- 
tions ; but certainly the least bitter and the fewest of all 
on the trade laws. To judge which of the two be the 5 
real, radical cause of quarrel, we have to see whether 
the commercial dispute did, in order of time, precede 
the dispute on taxation. There is not a shadow of 
evidence for it. Next, to enable us to judge whether 
at this moment a dislike to the trade laws be the real 10 
cause of quarrel, it is absolutely necessary to put the 
taxes out of the question by a repeal. See how the 
Americans act in this position, and then you will be able 
to discern correctly what is the true object of the con- 
troversy, or whether any controversy at all will remain. 15 
Unless you consent to remove this cause of difference, 
it is impossible with decency to assert that the dispute is 
not upon what it is avowed to be. And I would, Sir, 
recommend to your serious consideration, whether it be 
prudent to form a rule for punishing people, not on their 20 
own acts, but on your conjectures. Surely it is prepos- 
terous at the very best. It is not justifying your anger 
by their misconduct, but it is converting your ill-will into 
their delinquency. 

But the colonies will go further. Alas ! alas ! when 25 
will this speculating against fact and reason end ? What 
will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the 
hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct ? Is it true that 
no case can exist in which it is proper for the sovereign 



86 Speech on Conciliation 

to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects ? 
Is there anything pecuhar in this case to make a rule for 
itself? Is all authority of course lost, when it is not 
pushed to the extreme? Is it a certain^ maxim that the 

5 fewer causes of dissatisfaction are left by government, the 
more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel ? 

All these objections being in fact no more than sus- 
picions, conjectures, divinations,^ formed in defiance of 
fact and experience, they did not, Sir, discourage me 

10 from entertaining the idea of a conciliatory concession, 
founded on the principles which I have just stated. 

In forming a plan for this purpose, I endeavored to 
put myself in that frame of mind which was the most 
natural and the most reasonable, and which was certainly 

15 the most probable means of securing me from all error. 
I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a 
total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and 
with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our an- 
cestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a 

20 constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is 
a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the 
maxims and principles which formed the one and 
obtained the other. 

During the reigns of the kings of Spain of the Austrian 

25 family, whenever they were at a loss in the Spanish 

councils, it was common for their statesmen to say that 

they ought to consult the genius of Philip the Second. 

The genius of Philip the Second might mislead them ; 

1 Sound. 2 Surmises. 



speech on Conciliation 87 

and the issue of their affairs showed that they had not 
chosen the most perfect standard. But, Sir, I am sure 
that I shall not be misled when, in a case of constitu- 
tional difficulty, I consult the genius of the English 
Constitution. Consulting at that oracle (it was with all 5 
due humility and piety), I found four capital examples 
in a similar case before me : those of Ireland, Wales, 
Chester and Durham. 

Ireland, before the Enghsh conquest, though never 
governed by a despotic power, had no Parliament. How 10 
far the English Parliament itself was at that time mod- 
elled according to the present form is disputed among 
antiquarians. But we have all the reason in the world 
to be assured that a form of Parliament such as England 
then enjoyed she instantly communicated to Ireland ; 15 
and we are equally sure that almost every successive 
improvement in constitutional liberty, as fast as it was 
made here, was transmitted thither. The feudal baron- 
age and the feudal knighthood, the roots of our primitive 
consUtution, were early transplanted into that soil, and 20 
grew and flourished there. Magna Charta, if it did not 
give us originally a House of Commons, gave us at 
least a House of Commons of weight and consequence. 
But your ancestors did not churlishly sit down alone 
to the feast of Magna Charta. Ireland was made im- 25 
mediately a partaker. This benefit of English laws and 
Hberties, I confess, was not at first extended to all 
Ireland. Mark the consequence. English authority 
and English liberties had exactly the same boundaries. 



88 Speech on Conciliation 

Your standard could never be advanced an inch before 
your privileges. Sir John Davies shows beyond a doubt 
that the refusal of a general communication of these 
rights was the true cause why Ireland was five hundred 
5 years in subduing^ ; and after the vain projects of a mili- 
tary government, attempted in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth, it was soon discovered that nothing could make 
that country English, in civility" and allegiance, but your 
laws and your forms of legislature. It was not English 

10 arms, but the English Constitution, that conquered Ire- 
land. From that time Ireland has ever had a general 
Parliament, as she had before a partial Parliament. You 
changed the people, you altered the religion, but you 
never touched the form or the vital substance of free 

15 government in that kingdom. You deposed kings ; you 
restored them ; you altered the succession to theirs as 
well as to your own crown ; but you never altered their 
constitution, the principle of which was respected by 
usurpation, restored with the restoration of monarchy, 

20 and established, I trust, forever by the glorious Revolu- 
tion. This has made Ireland the great and flourishing 
kingdom that it is : and from a disgrace and a burden 
intolerable to this nation, has rendered her a principal 
part of her strength and ornament. This country cannot 

25 be said to have ever formally taxed her. The irregular 
things done in the confusion of mighty troubles and on 
the hinge ^ of great revolutions, even if all were done that 

^ Being: subdued. ^ Civilization. ^ Eve. 



Speech on Conciliation 89 

is said to have been done, form no example. If they 
have any effect in argument, they make an exception to 
prove the rule. None of your own Hberties could stand 
a moment if the casual deviations from them at such 
times were suffered to be used as proofs of their nullity. 5 
By the lucrative amount of such casual breaches in the 
Constitution, judge what the stated and fixed rule of sup- 
ply has been in' that kingdom. Your Irish pensioners 
would starve if they had no other fund to hve on than 
taxes granted by English authority. Turn your eyes to 10 
those popular grants from whence all your great supplies 
are come, and learn to respect that only source of pubhc 
wealth in the British Empire. 

My next example is Wales. This country was said 
to be reduced by Henry the Third. It was said more 15 
truly to be so by Edward the First. But though then 
conquered, it was not looked upon as any part of the 
realm of England. Its old constitution, whatever that 
might have been, was destroyed, and no good one was 
substituted in its place. The care of that tract ^ was put 20 
into the hands of Lords Marchers, — a form of govern- 
ment of a very singular kind, a strange, heterogeneous 
monster, something between hostility and government : 
perhaps it has a sort of resemblance, according to the 
modes ^ of those times, to that of commander-in-chief at 25 
present, to whom all civil power is granted as secondary. 
The manners of the Welsh nation followed the genius 

1 Region. 2 Usages. 



90 Speech on Conciliation 

of the government : the people were ferocious, restive, 
savage, and uncultivated, sometimes composed,^ never 
pacified. Wales, within itself, was in perpetual disorder, 
and it kept the frontier of England in perpetual alarm. 

5 Benefits from it to the state there were none. Wales was 
only known to England by incursion and invasion. 

Sir, during that state of things Parliament was not idle. 
They attempted to subdue the fierce spirit of the Welsh 
by all sorts of rigorous laws. They prohibited by statute 

10 the sending all sorts of arms into Wales, as you prohibit 
by proclamation (with something more of doubt on the 
legality) the sending arms to America. They disarmed 
the Welsh by statute, as you attempted (but still with 
more question on the legaHty) to disarm New England 

15 by an instruction. They made an act to drag offenders 
from Wales into England for trial, as you have done (but 
with more hardship) with regard to America. By another 
act, where one of the parties was an Englishman, they 
ordained that his trial should be always by English. 

20 They made acts to restrain trade, as you do ; and they 
prevented the Welsh from the use of fairs and markets, 
as you do the Americans from fisheries and foreign ports. 
In short, when the statute-book was not quite so much 
swelled as it is now, you find no less than fifteen acts 

25 of penal regulation on the subject of Wales. 

Here we rub our hands — A fine body of precedents 
for the authority of Parliament and the use of it ! — I 
admit it fully ; and pray add likewise to these precedents, 
1 Quieted, 



Speech on Conciliation 91 

that all the while Wales rid this kingdom like an incubus; 
that it was an unprofitable and oppressive burden ; and 
that an Englishman travelling in that country could not 
go six yards from the high-road without being murdered. 

The march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was 5 
not until after two hundred years discovered that by an 
eternal law Providence had decreed vexation to violence, 
and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did, however, at 
length open their eyes to the ill-husbandry of injustice. 
They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all 10 
tyrannies the least be endured, and that laws made 
against an whole nation were not the most effectual 
methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in the 
twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth, the course was 
entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and 15 
perfect rights of the crown of England, it gave to the 
Welsh all the rights and privileges of English subjects. 
A political order was established ; the military power gave 
way to the civil ; the marches were turned into counties. 
But that a nation should have a right to Enghsh liberties, 20 
and yet no share at all in the fundamental security of 
these liberties, — the grant of their own property, — 
seemed a thing so incongruous that eight years after, — 
that is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, — a complete 
and not ill-proportioned representation by counties and 25 
boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by act of Parliament. 
From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided ; 
obedience was restored ; peace, order and civilization 
followed in the train of liberty. When the day-star of the 



9^ Speech on Conciliation 

English Constitution had arisen in their hearts, all was 
harmony within and without : — 

— Simul alba nautis 

Stella refulsit, 
5 Defluit saxis agitatus humor; 

Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes, 
Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto 

Unda recumbit. 

The very same year the County Palatine of Chester 
10 received the same relief from its oppressions and 
the same remedy to its disorders. Before this time 
Chester was little less distempered^ than Wales. The 
inhabitants, without rights themselves, were the fittest 
to destroy the rights of others ; and from thence Richard 
15 the Second drew the standing army of archers with which 
for a time he oppressed England. The people of Chester 
applied to Parliament in a petition penned as I shall read 
to you : — 

To the King our Sovereign Lord, in most humble wise shewen ^ 
20 unto your most excellent Majesty the inhabitants of your Grace's 
County Palatine of Chester: (i) That where ^ the said County 
Palatine of Chester is and hath been always hitherto exempt, ex- 
cluded and separated out and from your high court of Parliament, 
to have any knights and burgesses within the said court; by reason 
25 whereof the said inhabitants have hitherto sustained manifold dis- 
herisons,* losses and damages, as well in their lands, goods and 
bodies, as in the good, civil and politic governance and maintenance 
of the commonwealth of their said country. (2) And forasmuch 

1 Disordered. ^ Show. The form is obsolete. 

2 Whereas. * Deprivations. 



^" 



Speech on Conciliation 93 

as the said inhabitants have always hitherto been bound by the acts 
and statues made and ordained by your said Highness and your 
most noble progenitors, by authority of the said court, as far forth 
as other counties, cities and boroughs have been, that have had 
their knights and burgesses within your said court of Parliament, 5 
and yet have had neither knight ne ^ burgess there for the said 
County Palatine; the said inhabitants, for lack thereof, have been 
oftentimes touched and grieved with acts and statutes made within 
the said court, as well derogatory unto the most ancient jurisdictions, 
liberties and privileges of your said County Palatine, as prejudicial lo 
unto the commonwealth, quietness, rest and peace of your Grace's 
most bounden subjects inhabiting within the same. 

What did Parliament with this audacious address? 
Reject it as a Hbel ? Treat it as an affront to government? 
Spurn it as a derogation from the rights of legislature ? 15 
Did they toss it over the table? Did they burn 
it by the hands of the common hangman? They took 
the petition of grievance, all rugged as it was, without 
softening or temperament,^ unpurged of the original 
bitterness and indignation of complaint ; they made it 20 
the very preamble to their act of redress, and consecrated 
its principle to all ages in the sanctuary of legislation. 

Here is my third example. It was attended with the 
success of the two former. Chester, civilized as well as 
Wales, has demonstrated that freedom, and not servitude, 25 
is the cure for anarchy ; as rehgion, and not atheism, is 
the true remedy for superstition. Sir, this pattern of 
Chester was followed in the reign of Charles the Second 
with regard to the County Palatine of Durham, which is 
^ Nor. 2 Modification. 



94 Speech on Conciliation 

my fourth example. This county had long lain out of the 
pale of free legislation. So scrupulously was the example 
of Chester followed, that the style of the preamble is 
nearly the same with^ that of the Chester act; and 
5 without affecting the abstract extent of the authority of 
Parliament, it recognizes the equity of not suffering any 
considerable district in which the British subjects may 
act as a body, to be taxed without their own voice in the 
grant. 

10 Now if the doctrines of policy contained in these pre- 
ambles and the force of these examples in the acts of 
Parliaments avail anything, what can be said against 
applying them with regard to America? Are not the 
people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh ? The 

15 preamble of the act of Henry the Eighth says the Welsh 
speak a language no way resembling that of his Majesty's 
English subjects. Are the Americans not as numerous? 
If we may trust the learned and accurate Judge Barring- 
ton's account of North Wales, and take that as a standard 

20 to measure the rest, there is no comparison. The 
people cannot amount to above 200,000, — not a tenth 
part of the number in the colonies. Is America in 
rebelHon? Wales was hardly ever free from it. Have 
you attempted to govern America by penal statutes? 

25 You made fifteen for Wales. But your legislative au- 
thority is perfect with regard to America. Was it less 
perfect in Wales, Chester, and Durham? But America 
is virtually^ represented. What ! does the electric force 
1 As. 2 Essentially, though not actually. 



Speech on Conciliation 95 

of virtual representation more easily pass over the Atlan- 
tic than pervade Wales, which lies in your neighborhood? 
or than Chester and Durham, surrounded by abundance 
of representation that is actual and palpable? But, Sir, 
your ancestors thought this sort of virtual representation, 5 
however ample, to be totally insufficient for the freedom 
of the inhabitants of territories that are so near and com- 
paratively so inconsiderable. How then can I think it 
sufficient for those which are infinitely greater and in- 
finitely more remote ? 10 

You will now, Sir, perhaps imagine that I am on 
the point of proposing to you a scheme for a representa- 
tion of the colonies in ParHament. Perhaps I might be 
inclined to entertain some such thought ; but a great 
flood stops me in my course. Opposnit natura — I can- 15 
not remove the eternal barriers of the creation. The 
thing, in that mode, I do not know to be possible. As 
I meddle with no theory, I do not absolutely assert the 
impracticabihty of such a representation: but I do not 
see my way to it ; and those who have been more confi- 20 
dent have not been more successful. However, the arm 
of public benevolence is not shortened, and there are 
often several means to the same end. What Nature has 
disjoined in one way Wisdom may unite in another. 
When we cannot give the benefit as we would wish, let 25 
us not refuse it aUogether. If we cannot give the prin- 
cipal, let us find a substitute. But how? Where ? What 
substitute? 

Fortunately I am not obliged for the ways and 



96 Speech on Conciliation 

means of this substitute to tax my own unproductive in- 
vention. I am not even obliged to go to the rich treas- 
ury of the fertile framers of imaginary commonwealths ; 
not to the Republic of Plato, not to the Utopia of More, 
5 not to the Oceana of Harrington. It is before me ; it 
is at my feet, — 

And the rude swain 
Treads daily on it with his clouted shoon. 

I only wish you to recognize, for the theory, the an- 

locient constitutional policy of this kingdom with regard 
to representation, as that poHcy has been declared in acts 
of Parliament ; and as to the practice, to return to that 
mode which a uniform experience has marked out to you 
as best, and in which you walked with security, advan- 

15 tage and honor until the year 1763. 

My resolutions, therefore, mean to estabhsh the equity 
and justice of a taxation of America by grants and not by 
imposition ; to mark the legal competency of the colony 
assemblies for the support of their government in peace 

20 and for public aids in time of war ; to acknowledge that 
this legal competency has had a dutiful and beneficial 
exercise, and that experience has shown the benefit of 
their grants and the futility of parliamentary taxation 
as a jnethod of supply. 

25 These solid truths compose six fundamental proposi- 
tions. There are three more resolutions corollary to 
these. If you admit the first set, you can hardly reject 
the others. But if you admit the first, I shall be far 



Speech on Conciliation 97 

from solicitous whether you accept or refuse the last. I 
think these six massive pillars will be of strength suffi- 
cient to support the temple of British concord. I have 
no more doubt than I entertain of my existence that, if 
you admitted these, you would command an immediate 5 
peace, and, with but tolerable future management, a last- 
ing obedience in America. I am not arrogant in this 
confident assurance. The propositions are all mere 
matters of fact ; and if they are such facts as draw 
irresistible conclusions even in the stating, this is the 10 
power of truth, and not any management of mine. 

Sir, I shall, open the whole plan to you, together with 
such observations on the motions as may tend to illus- 
trate them where they may want explanation. The first 
is a resolution, — i- 

That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 
the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parlia- 20 
ment. 

This is a plain matter of fact, necessary to be laid down, 
and (excepting the description) it is laid down in the 
language of the constitution ; it is taken nearly verbatim 
from acts of Parliament. 25 

The second is Hke unto the first, — 

That the said colonies and plantations have been liable to, and 
bounden^ by, several subsidies, payments, rates and taxes, given 

1 Bound. 

BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 7 



98 Speech on Conciliation 

and granted by Parliament, though the said colonies and planta- 
tions have not their knights and burgesses in the said high court 
of Parliament, of their own election, to represent the condition of 
their country; by lack whereof they have been oftentimes touched 
5 and grieved by subsidies given, granted and assented to, in the 
said court, in a manner prejudicial to the commonwealth, quiet- 
ness, rest and peace of the subjects inhabiting within the same. 

Is this description too hot or too cold, too strong or 
too weak? Does it arrogate too much to the supreme 
10 legislature? Does it lean too much to the claims of the 
people? If it runs into any of these errors, the fault is 
not mine. It is the language of your own ancient acts 
of Parliament : — 

Non meus hie sermo, sed quae praecepit Ofellaeus, 
15 Rusticus, abnormis sapiens. 

It is the genuine produce of the ancient, rustic, manly, 
home-bred sense of this country, — I did not dare to 
rub off a particle of the venerable rust that rather adorns 
and preserves, than destroys, the metal. It would be a 

20 profanation to touch with a tool the stones which con- 
struct the sacred altar of peace. I would not violate 
with modern polish the ingenuous and noble roughness 
of these truly constitutional materials. Above all things, 
I was resolved not to be guilty of tampering, — the 

25 odious vice of restless and unstable minds. I put my 
foot in the tracks of our forefathers, where I can neither 
wander nor stumble. Deteruiining to fix articles of 
peace, I was resolved not to be wise beyond what was 
written ; I was resolved to use nothing else than the form 



Speech on Conciliation 99 

of sound words, to let others abound in their own sense, 
and carefully to abstain from all expressions of my own. 
What the law has said, I say. In all things else I am 
silent. I have no organ but for her words. This, if it 
be not ingenious, I am sure is safe. 5 

There are indeed words expressive of grievance in this 
second resolution, which those who are resolved always 
to be in the right will deny to contain matter of fact, as 
applied to the present case, although Parliament thought 
them true with regard to the counties of Chester and 10 
Durham. They will deny that the Americans were ever 
" touched and grieved " with the taxes. If they con- 
sider nothing in taxes but their weight as pecuniary 
impositions, there might be some pretence for this 
denial. But men may be sorely touched and deeply 15 
grieved in their privileges as well as in their purses. 
Men may lose little in property by the act which takes 
away all their freedom. When a man is robbed of a trifle 
on the highway, it is not the twopence lost that consti- 
tutes the capital outrage. This is not confined to privi- 20 
leges. Even ancient indulgences withdrawn, without 
offence on the part of those who enjoyed such favors, 
operate as grievances. But were the Americans then not 
touched and grieved by the taxes, in some measure, 
merely as taxes? If so, why were they almost all either 25 
wholly repealed or exceedingly reduced? Were they 
not touched and grieved even by the regulating duties of 
the sixth of George the Second? Else why were the 
duties first reduced to one-third in 1 764, and afterwards 
L.ofC. 



lOO speech on Conciliation 

to a third of that third in the year 1766? Were they 
not touched and grieved by the Stamp Act ? I shall say 
they were, until that tax is revived. Were they not 
touched and grieved by the duties of 1767, which were 
5 likewise repealed, and which Lord Hillsborough tells you 
(for the ministry) were laid contrary to the true principle 
of commerce ? Is not the assurance given by that noble 
person to the colonies of a resolution to lay no more 
taxes on them, an admission that taxes would touch and 

10 grieve them? Is not the resolution of the noble lord in 
the blue ribbon, now standing on your journals, the 
strongest of all proofs that parliamentary subsidies really 
touched and grieved them? Else why all these changes, 
modifications, repeals, assurances and resolutions ? 

15 The next proposition is, — 

That, from the distance of the said colonies and from other cir- 
cumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for procuring a 
representation in Parliament for the said colonies. 

This is an assertion of a fact. I go no further on the 
30 paper, though in my private judgment a useful repre- 
sentation is impossible. I am sure it is not desired by 
them ; nor ought it, perhaps, by us : but I abstain from 
opinions. 

The fourth resolution is, — 

25 That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, chosen 
in part or in the whole by the freemen, freeholders or other free in- 
habitants thereof, commonly called the general assembly, or gen- 



Speech on Conciliation loi 

eral court, with powers legally to raise, levy and assess, according 
to the several usages of such colonies, duties and taxes towards 
defraying ^ all sorts of public services. 

This competence in the colony assembUes is certain. 
It is proved by the whole tenor of their acts of supply in 5 
all the assemblies, in which the constant style - of grant- 
ing is, " An aid to his Majesty " ; and acts granting to 
the crown have regularly for near a century passed the 
public offices without dispute. Those who have been 
pleased paradoxically to deny this right, holding that lo 
none but the British Parliament can grant to the crown, 
are wished^ to look to what is done, not only in the 
colonies, but in Ireland, in one uniform, unbroken tenor 
every session. Sir, I am surprised that this doctrine 
should come from some of the law servants of the crown. 15 
I say that if the crown could be responsible, his Majesty 
— but certainly the ministers, and even these law officers 
themselves through whose hands the acts pass, biennially 
in Ireland or annually in the colonies, are in an habitual 
course of committing impeachable offences. What habit- 20 
ual offenders have been all presidents of the council, all 
secretaries of state, all first lords of trade, all attorneys 
and all solicitors-general ! However, they are safe, as 
no one impeaches them ; and there is no ground of 
charge against them, except in their own unfounded 25 
theories. 

1 Supply "the cost of." 
2 Language. 3 Desired. 



I02 Speech on Conciliation 

The fifth resolution is also a resolution of fact, — 

That the said general assemblies, general courts, or other bodies 
legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry times freely granted 
several large subsidies and public aids for his Majesty's service, ac- 
5 cording to their abilities, v^'hen required thereto by letter from one 
of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state; and that their right 
to grant the same and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the said 
grants have been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament. 

To say nothing of their great expenses in the Indian 

10 wars, and not to take their exertion in foreign ones so 

high ^ as the supplies in the year 1695, not to go back to 

their public contributions in the year 1710, 1 shall begin to 

travel only where the journals give me light, — resolving 

to deal in nothing but fact authenticated by parliamentary 

15 record, and to build myself wholly on that solid basis. 

On the 4th of April, 1748,^ a committee of this House 

came to the following resolution : — 

Resolved, That it is the opinion of this committee that it is jiist 
and reasonable that the several provinces and colonies of Massa- 
20 chusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Islan 1, be 
reimbursed the expenses they have been at in taking and securing 
to the crown of Great Britain the island of Cape Breton and its 
dependencies. 

These expenses were immense for such colonies. 
25 They were above ^200,000 sterling : money first raised 
and advanced on their public credit. 

On the 28th of January, 1756,^ a message from the 
king came to us to this effect : — 

^ So far back. ^ Journals of the House, Vol. XXV. 

3 Journals of the House, Vol. XXVII. 



Speech on Conciliation 103 

His Majesty, being sensible of the zeal and vigor with which his 
faithful sul:)jects of certain colonies in North America have exerted 
themselves in defence of his Majesty's just rights and possessions, 
recommends it to this House to take the same into their considera- 
tion, and to enable his Majesty to give them such assistance as may 5 
be di proper reward and encouragement. 

On the 3d of February, 1756/ the House came to a 
suitable resolution, expressed in words nearly the same as 
those of the message, but with the further addition that 
the money then voted was as an encouragement to the 10 
colonies to exert themselves with vigor. It will not be 
necessary to go through all the testimonies which your 
own records have given to the truth of my resolutions. 
I will only refer you to the places in the journals : — 

Vol. XXVH. — i6th and 19th May, 1757. 15 

Vol. XXVHI. — June ist, 1758; April 26th and 30th, 1759; 

March 26th and 31st, and April 28th, 1760; Jan. 9th and 20th, 1761. 
Vol. XXIX. — Jan. 22d and 26th, 1762; March 14th and 17th, 

1763- l^ 

Sir, here is the repeated acknowledgment of Parliament 20 
that the colonies not only gave, but gave to satiety. 
This nation has formally acknowledged two things : first, 
that the colonies had gone beyond their abilities, Parlia- 
ment having thought it necessary to reimburse them ; 
secondly, that they had acted legally and laudably in their 25 
grants of money and their maintenance of troops, since 
the compensation is expressly given as reward and en- 
couragement. Reward is not bestowed for acts that are 

1 Journals of the House, Vol. XXVII. 



I04 Speech on Conciliation 

unlawful ; and encouragement is not held out to things 
that deserve reprehension. My resolution therefore does 
nothing more than collect into one proposition what is 
scattered through your journals. I give you nothing but 
5 your own ; and you cannot refuse in the gross what 
you have so often acknowledged in detail. The ad- 
mission of this, which will be so honorable to them and 
to you, will indeed be mortal ^ to all the miserable stories 
by which the passions of the misguided people have been 

10 engaged in an unhappy system. The people heard, 
indeed, from the beginning of these disputes, one thing 
continually dinned in their ears, — that reason and justice 
demanded that the Americans, who paid no taxes, should 
be compelled to contribute. How did that fact of their pay- 

15 ing nothing stand when the taxing system began? When 
Mr. Grenville began to form his system of American 
revenue, he stated in this House that the colonies were 
then in debt two million six hundred thousand pounds 
sterling money, and was of opinion they would discharge 

20 that debt in four years. On this state, those untaxed 
people were actually subject to the payment of taxes to 
the amount of six hundred and fifty thousand a year. In 
fact, however, Mr. Grenville was mistaken. The funds 
given for sinking the debt did not prove quite so ample 

25 as both the colonies and he expected. The calculation 
was too sanguine ; the reduction was not completed till 
some years after, and at different times in different colo- 
nies. However, the taxes after the war continued too 
1 Fatal. 



Speech on Conciliation 105 

great to bear any addition with prudence or propriety ; 
and when the burdens imposed in consequence of former 
requisitions were discharged, our tone became too high 
to resort again to requisition. No colony since that time 
ever has had any requisition whatsoever made to ^ it. 5 

We see the sense - of the crown and the sense of Par- 
hament on the productive nature of a revenue by grant. 
Now search the same journals for the produce of the 
revenue by imposition. Where is it? Let us know the 
volume and the page. What is the gross, what is the net 10 
produce? To what service is it applied? How have 
you appropriated its surplus? What, can none of the 
many skilful index-makers that we are now employing 
find any trace of it? Well, let them and that rest to- 
gether. But are the journals, which say nothing of the 15 
revenue, as silent on the discontent? Oh, no ! a child 
may find it. It is the melancholy burden and blot of 
every page. 

I think, then, I am, from those journals, justified in the 
sixth and last resolution, which is, — 20 

That it hath been found by experience that the manner of grant- 
ing the said supplies and aids by the said general assemblies hath 
been more agreeable to the said colonies, and more beneficial and 
conducive to the public service, than the mode of giving and grant- 
ing aids in Parliament, to be raised and paid in the said colonies. 25 

This makes the whole of the fundamental part of the 
plan. The conclusion is irresistible. You cannot say 

1 Upon. 2 Opinion. 



io6 Speech on Conciliation 

that you were driven by any necessity to an exercise of 
the utmost rights of legislature. You cannot assert that 
you took on yourselves the task of imposing colony taxes, 
from the want of another legal body that is competent to 

5 the purpose of supplying the exigencies of the state 
without wounding the prejudices of the people. Neither 
is it true that the body so qualified and having that 
competence had neglected the duty. 

The question now, on all this accumulated matter, is, 

10 — whether you will choose to abide by a profitable expe- 
rience or a mischievous theory ; whether you choose to 
build on imagination or fact ; whether you prefer enjoy- 
ment or hope ; satisfaction in your subjects or discontent? 
If these propositions are accepted, everything which has 

15 been made to enforce a contrary system must, I take it 
for granted, fall along with it. On that ground I have 
drawn the following resolution, which, when it comes to 
be moved, will naturally be divided in a proper man- 
ner : — 

20 That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the seventh year 
of the rtign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for granting 
certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in America; 
for allowing a drawback of the duties of customs upon the exporta- 
tion from this kingdom, of coffee and cocoanuts of the produce of 

25 the said colonies or plantations; for discontinuing the drawbacks 
payable on China earthenware exported to America; and for more 
effectually preventing the clandestine running 1 of goods in the 
said colonies and plantations." — And that it maybe proper to 
repeal an act iTiade in the fourteenth year of the reign of his pres- 

l Smuggling. 



Speech on Conciliation 107 

ent Majesty, entitled, "An act to discontinue, in such manner and 
for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, 
lading or shipping, of goods, wares and merchandise, at tlie town 
and within the harbor of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts 
Bay, in North America." — And that it may be proper to repeal an 5 
act made in the fourteenth year of the reign of his present Majesty, 
entitled, "An act for the impartial administration of justice in the 
cases of persons questioned for any acts done by them in the exe- 
cution of the law, or for the suppression of riots and tumults, in the 
province of Massachusetts Bay, in New England." — And that it 10 
may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth year of the 
reign of his present Majesty, entitled, "An act for the better regu- 
lating the government of the province of the Massachusetts Bay, 
in New England." — And also, that it may be proper to explain and 
amend an act made in the thirty-fifth year of the reign of King 15 
Henry the Eighth, entitled, " An act for the trial of treasons com- 
mitted out of the king's dominions." 

I wish, Sir, to repeal the Boston Port Bill, because 
(independently of the dangerous precedent of suspending 
the rights of the subject during the king's pleasure) it 20 
was passed, as I apprehend, with less regularity and on 
more partial principles than it ought. The corporation 
of Boston was not heard before it was condemned. 
Other towns, full as guilty as she was, have not had their 
ports blocked up. Even the Restraining Bill of the 25 
present session does not go to the length of the Boston 
Port Act. The same ideas of prudence which induced 
you not to extend equal punishment to equal guilt, even 
when you were punishing, induced me, who mean not to 
chastise but to reconcile, to be satisfied with the punish- 30 
ment already partially inflicted. 



io8 Speech on Conciliation 

Ideas of prudence and accommodation to circumstances 
prevent you from taking away the charters of Connecticut 
and Rhode Island, as you have taken away that of 
Massachusetts Colony, though the crown has far less 
5 power in the two former provinces than it enjoyed in the 
latter, and though the abuses have been full as great and 
as flagrant in the exempted as in the punished. The 
same reasons of prudence and accommodation have weight 
with me in restoring the charter of Massachusetts Bay. 

10 Besides, Sir, the act which changes the charter of Massa- 
chusetts is in many particulars so exceptionable that, if I 
did not wish absolutely to repeal, I would by all means 
desire to alter it, as several of its provisions tend to the 
subversion of all public and private justice. Such, among 

15 others, is the power in the governor to change the sheriff 
at his pleasure, and to make a new returning officer for 
every special cause. It is shameful to behold such a 
regulation standing among English laws. 

The act for bringing persons accused of committing 

20 murder under the orders of government to England for 
trial is but temporary. That act has calculated the 
probable duration of our quarrel with the colonies, and 
is accommodated to that supposed duration. I would 
hasten the happy moment of reconciliation ; and there- 

25 fore must, on my principle, get rid of that most justly 
obnoxious act. 

The act of Henry the Eighth for the trial of treasons I 
do not mean to take away, but to confine it to its proper 
bounds and original intention ; to make it expressly for 



Speech on Conciliation 109 

trial of treasons (and the greatest treasons may be 
committed) in places where the jurisdiction of the 
crown does not extend. 

Having guarded the privileges of local legislature, I 
would next secure to the colonies a fair and unbiased 5 
judicature ; for Which purpose, Sir, I propose the 
following resolution : — 

That from the time when the general assembly, or general 
court, of any colony or plantation in North America shall have 
appointed, by act of assembly duly confirmed, a settled salary to lo 
the offices of the chief justice and other judges of the superior 
court, it may be proper that the said chief justice and other judges 
of the superior courts of such colony shall hold his and their office 
and offices during their good behavior, and shall not be removed 
therefrom but when the said removal shall be adjudged by his 15 
Majesty in council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general 
assembly, or on a complaint from the governor or council or the 
house of representatives, severally, of the colony in which the said 
chief justice and other judges have exercised the said offices. 

The next resolution relates to the courts of admiralty. 20 
It is this : — 

That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty or 
vice-admiralty authorized by the fifteenth chapter of the fourth of 
George the Third, in such a manner as to make the same more 
commodious to those who sue or who are sued in the said courts ; 25 
and to provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges in 
the same. 

These courts I do not wish to take away : they are in 
themselves proper establishments. This court is one of 



no Speech on Conciliation 

the capital securities of the Act of Navigation. The 
extent of its jurisdiction, indeed, has been increased ; 
but this is altogether as proper, and is indeed on many 
accounts more eligible,^ where new powers were wanted, 
5 than a court absolutely new. But courts incommodiously 
situated in effect deny justice ; and a court partaking in 
the fruits of its own condemnation is a robber. The 
Congress complain, and complain jusdy, of this griev- 
ance. 

10 These are the three consequential propositions. I 
have thought of two or three more ; but they come 
rather too near detail and to the province of executive 
government, which I wish Parliament always to superin- 
tend, never to assume. If the first six are granted, con- 

15 gruity will carry the latter three. If not, the things that 
remain unrepealed will be, I hope, rather unseemly 
incumbrances on the building than very materially detri- 
mental to its strength and stability. 

Here, Sir, I should close ; but I plainly perceive some 

20 objections remain which I ought, if possible, to remove. 
The first will be that, in resorting to the doctrine of our 
ancestors as contained in the preamble to the Chester 
Act, I prove too much ; that the grievance from a want 
of representation, stated in that preamble, goes to the 

25 whole of legislation as well as to taxation ; and that the 
colonies, grounding themselves upon that doctrine, will 
apply it to all parts of legislative authority. 
/'To this objection, with all possible deference and 
1 Suitable. 



Speech on Conciliation 1 1 1 

humility, and wishing as Httle as any man hving to im- 
pair the smallest particle of our supreme authority, I 
answer that the 'wo?-ds are the ivords of Parliament, and 
not mine ; and that all false and inconclusive inferences 
drawn from them are not mine, for I heartily disclaim 5 
any such inference. I have chosen the words of an act 
of Parliament which Mr. Grenville, surely a tolerably 
zealous and very judicious advocate for the sovereignty of 
Parliament, formerly moved to have read at your table in 
confirmation of his tenets. It is true that Lord Chatham 10 
considered these preambles as declaring strongly in favor 
of his opinions. He was a no less powerful advocate for 
the privileges of the Americans. Ought I not from 
hence to presume that these preambles are as favorable 
as possible to both, when properly understood, — favorable 15 
both to the rights of Parliament and to the privilege of the 
dependencies of this crown? But, Sir, the object of 
grievance in my resolution I have not taken from the 
Chester, but from the Durham Act, which confines the 
hardship of want of representation to the case of sub- 20 
sidies, and which therefore falls in ^ exactly with the case 
of the colonies. But whether the unrepresented counties 
were de jure or de facto bound, the preambles do not ac- 
curately distinguish ; nor indeed was it necessary ; for 
whether de jure or de facto, the legislature thought the 25 
exercise of the power of taxing, as of right or as of fact 
without right, equally a grievance and equally oppressive. 
I do not know that the colonies have, in any general 
1 Agrees. 



112 Speech on Conciliation 

way or in any cool hour, gone much beyond the demand 
of immunity in relation to taxes. It is not fair to judge 
of the temper or disposition of any man or any set of 
men, when they are composed and at rest, from their 
5 conduct or their expressions in a state of disturbance and 
irritation. It is, besides, a very great mistake to imagine 
that mankind follow up practically any speculative prin- 
ciple, either of government or of freedom, as far as it 
will go in argument and logical illation. We Englishmen 

10 stop very short of the principles upon which we support 
any given part of our Constitution, or even the whole of 
it together. I could easily, if I had not already tired 
you, give you very striking and convincing instances of 
it. This is nothing but what is natural and proper. All 

15 government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, 
every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on com- 
promise and barter. We balance inconveniences ; we 
give and take ; we remit some rights that we may enjoy 
others ; and we choose rather to be happy citizens than 

20 subtle disputants. As we must give away some natural 
liberty to enjoy civil advantages, so we must sacrifice 
some civil liberties for the advantages to be derived from 
the communion and fellowship of a great empire. 7 But in 
all fair dealings the thing bought must bear some pro- 

25 portion to the purchase paid. None will barter away the 
immediate jewel of his soul. Though a great house is 
apt to make slaves haughty, yet it is purchasing a part of 
the artificial importance of a great empire too dear to 
pay for it all essential rights and all the intrinsic dignity 



Speech on Conciliation 113 

of human nature. None of us who would not risk his 
life rather than fall under a government purely arbitrary. 
But although there are some amongst us who think our 
Constitution wants many improvements to make it a com- 
plete system of liberty, perhaps none who are of that 5 
opinion would think it right to aim at such improvement 
by disturbing his country and risking everything that is 
dear to him. In every arduous enterprise we consider 
what we are to lose as well as what we are to gain ; and 
the more and better stake of liberty every people possess, 10 
the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to make it 
more. These are the cords of man. Man acts from 
adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on 
metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the great master of 
reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight and pro- 15 
priety, against this species of delusive geometrical ac- 
curacy in moral arguments, as the most fallacious of all 
sophistry. ^ 

The Americans will have no interest contrary to the 
grandeur and glory of England, when they are not 20 
oppressed by the weight of it ; and they will rather be 
inclined to respect the acts of a superintending legisla- 
ture, when they see them the acts of that power which 
is itself the security, not the rival, of their secondary 
importance. In this assurance my mind most perfectly 25 
acquiesces; and I confess I feel not the least alarm from 
the discontents which are to arise from putting people 
at their ease ; nor do I apprehend the destruction of this 
empire from giving, by an act of free grace and indul- 

BURKE ON CONCILIATION — 8 



114 Speech on Conciliation 

gence, to two millions of my fellow-citizens, some share 
of those rights upon which I have always been taught to 
value myself. 

It is said, indeed, that this power of granting, vested 

5 in American assemblies, would dissolve the unity of the 
empire, which was preserved entire, although Wales and 
Chester and Durham were added to it. Truly, Mr. 
Speaker, I do not know what this unity means ; nor has 
it ever been heard of, that I know, in the constitutional 

10 policy of this country. The very idea of subordination 
of parts excludes this notion of simple and undivided 
unity. England is the head, but she is not the head and 
the members too. Ireland has ever had from the begin- 
ning a separate, but not an independent, legislature, which, 

15 far from distracting, promoted the union of the whole. 
Everything was sweetly and harmoniously disposed 
through both islands for the conservation of English 
dominion and the communication of English liberties. I 
do not see that the same principles might not be carried 

20 into twenty islands, and with the same good effect. This 
is my model with regard to America, as far as the inter- 
nal circumstances of the two countries are the same. I 
know no other unity of this empire than I can draw from 
its example during these periods when it seemed to my 

25 poor understanding more united than it is now, or than 
it is likely to be by the present methods. 

But since I speak of these methods, I recollect, Mr. 
Speaker, almost too late, that I promised, before I 
finished, to say something of the proposition of the 



Speech on Conciliation 115 

noble lord ^ on the floor, which has been so lately 
received, and stands on your journals. I must be deeply 
concerned whenever it is my misfortune to continue 
a difference with the majority of this House. But as the 
reasons for that difference are my apology for thus 5 
troubling you, suffer me to state them in a very few 
words. I shall compress them into as small a body as I 
possibly can, having already debated that matter at 
large when the question was before the committee. 

First, then, I cannot admit that proposition of a ransom 10 
by auction, because it is a mere project.^ It is a thing 
new, unheard of, supported by no experience, justified 
by no analogy, without example of our ancestors or root 
in the Constitution. It is neither regular parliamentary 
taxation nor colony grant. Experimeutum in corpore vili 15 
is a good rule which will ever make me adverse to any 
trial of experiments on what is certainly the most valuable 
of all subjects, — the peace of this empire. 

Secondly, it is an experiment which must be fatal in 
the end to our Constitution. For what is it but a scheme 20 
for taxing the colonies in the antechamber of the 
noble lord and his successors? To settle the quotas and 
proportions in this House is clearly impossible. You, 
Sir, may flatter yourself you shall sit a state auctioneer 
with your hammer in your hand, and knock down to each 25 
colony as it bids. But to settle (on the plan laid down 
by the noble lord) the true proportional payment for four 

^ Lord North. 2 a bare proposition and nothing more. 



ii6 Speech on Conciliation 

or five and twenty governments, according to the abso- 
lute and the relative wealth of each, and according to the 
British proportion of wealth and burden, is a wild and 
chimerical notion. This new taxation must therefore 
5 come in by the back door of the Constitution. Each 
quota must be brought to this House ready formed. You 
can neither add nor alter. You must register it. You 
can do nothing further. For on what grounds can 
you deliberate either before or after the proposition? 

loYou cannot hear the counsel for all these provinces, 
quarrelling each on its own quantity of payment and its 
proportion to others. If you should attempt it, the 
committee of provincial ways and means, or by whatever 
other name it will delight to be called, must swallow up 

15 all the time of Parliament. 

Thirdly, it does not give satisfaction to the complaint 
of the colonies. They complain that they are taxed 
without their consent ; you answer that you will fix the 
sum at which they shall be taxed. That is, you give 

20 them the very grievance for the remedy. You tell them, 
indeed, that you will leave the mode to themselves. I 
really beg pardon ; it gives me pain to mention it ; but 
you must be sensible that you will not perform this part 
of the compact. For suppose the colonies were to lay 

25 the duties which furnished their contingent upon the im- 
portation of your manufactures, you know you would 
never suffer such a tax to be laid. You know, too, that 
you would not suffer any other modes of taxation. So 
that when you come to explain yourself, it will be found 



Speech on Conciliation 117 

that you will neither leave to themselves the quantum nor 
the mode ; nor indeed anything. The whole is delusion 
from one end to the other. U 

Fourthly, this method of ransom by auction, unless it 
be tniiversally accepted, will plunge you into great and 5 
inextricable difficulties. In what year of our Lord are 
the proportions of payments to be settled? To say 
nothing of the impossibility that colony agents should 
have general powers of taxing the colonies at their dis- 
cretion, consider, I implore you, that the communication 10 
by special messages and orders between these agents and 
their constituents on each variation of the case, when 
the parties come to contend together and to dispute on 
their relative proportions, will be a matter of delay, per- 
plexity and confusion that never can have an end. ^ 15 

If all the colonies do not appear at the outcry,^ what is 
the condition of those assemblies who offer, by themselves 
or their agents, to tax themselves up to your ideas of their 
proportion? The refractory colonies who refuse all 
•composition^ will remain taxed only to your old imposi- 20 
tions, which, however grievous in principle, are trifling 
as to production. The obedient colonies in this scheme 
are heavily taxed ; the refractory remain unburdened. 
What will you do? Will you lay new and heavier taxes 
by Parliament on the disobedient? Pray consider in 25 
what way you can do it. You are perfectly convinced 
that in the way of taxing you can do nothing but at the 

1 Public sale at auction. '^ Settlement or adjustment. 



ii8 Speech on Conciliation 

ports. Now suppose it is Virginia that refuses to appear 
at your auction, while Maryland and North CaroUna bid 
handsomely for their ransom, and are taxed to your 
quota: how will you put these colonies on a par? Will 

5 you tax the tobacco of Virginia? If you do, you give its 
death-wound to your English revenue at home and to one 
of the very greatest articles of your own foreign trade. 
If you tax the import of that rebellious colony, what do 
you tax but your own manufactures or the goods of some 

10 other obedient and already well-taxed colony? Who has 
said one word on this labyrinth of detail which bewilders you 
more and more as you enter into it? Who has presented, 
who can present you with a clue to lead you out of it? 
I think. Sir, it is impossible that you should not recollect 

15 that the colony bounds^ are so implicated in one another 
(you know it by your other experiments in the bill for 
prohibiting the New England fishery) that you can lay 
no possible restraints on almost any of them which may 
not be presently eluded, if you do not confound the 

20 innocent with the guilty, and burden those whom, upon 
every principle, you ought to exonerate. He must be 
grossly ignorant of America who thinks that, without 
falHng into this confusion of all rules of equity and policy, 
you can restrain any single colony, especially Virginia 

25 and Maryland, the central and most important of them all. 
Let it also be considered that either in the present con- 
fusion you settle a permanent contingent,^ which will and 
must be trifling, and then you have no effectual revenue ; 
1 Boundaries. 2 Quota. 



Speech on Conciliation 119 

or you change the quota at every exigency, and then on 
every new repartition you will have a new quarrel. 

Reflect besides, that when you have fixed a quota for 
every colony, you have not provided for prompt and 
punctual payment. Suppose one, two, five, ten years' 5 
arrears. You cannot issue a treasury extent ^ against the 
failing colony. You must make new Boston Port Bills, 
new restraining laws, new acts for dragging men to England 
for trial. You' must send out new fleets, new armies. 
All is to begin again. From this day forward the empire 10 
is never to know an hour's tranquillity. An intestine fire 
will be kept alive in the bowels of the colonies, which one 
time or other must consume this whole empire. I allow 
indeed that the empire of Germany raises her revenue 
and her troops by quotas and contingents; but the 15 
revenue of the empire and the army of the empire is the 
worst revenue and the worst army in the world. 

Instead of standing " revenue, you will therefore have a 
perpetual quarrel. Indeed, the noble lord who proposed 
this project of a ransom by auction seemed himself to be 20 
of that opinion. His project was rather designed for 
breaking the union of the colonies than for establishing a 
revenue. He confessed he apprehended that his pro- 
posal would not be to their taste. I say this scheme of 
disunion seems to be at the bottom of the project ; for 1 25 
will not suspect that the noble lord meant nothing but 
merely to delude the nation by an airy phantom which he 

1 A writ for valuing land to be taken in satisfaction of a debt due 
to the Crown. ^ Permanent. 



I20 Speech on Conciliation 

never intended to realize. But whatever his views may be, 
as I propose the peace and union of the colonies as 
the very foundation of my plan, it cannot accord with one 
whose foundation is perpetual discord. 
5 Compare the two. This I offer to give you is plain 
and simple ; the other full of perplexed and intricate 
mazes. This is mild ; that harsh. This is found by 
experience effectual for its purposes ; the other is a new 
project. This is universal ; the other calculated for 

10 certain colonies only. This is immediate in its concilia- 
tory operation ; the other remote, contingent, full of 
hazard. Mine is what becomes the dignity of a ruling 
people, — gratuitous, unconditional, and not held out as 
a matter of bargain and sale. I have done my duty in 

15 proposing it to you. I have indeed tired you by a long 
discourse ; but this is the misfortune of those to whose 
influence nothing will be conceded, and who must win 
every inch of their ground by argument. You have 
heard me with goodness. May you decide with wisdom ! 

20 For my part, I feel my mind greatly disburdened by 
what I have done to-day. I have been the less fearful 
of trying your patience, because on this subject I mean 
to spare it altogether in future. I have this comfort, that 
in every stage of the American affairs I have steadily 

25 opposed the measures that have produced the confusion, 
and may bring on the destruction, of this empire. I 
now go so far as to risk a proposal of my own. If I can- 
not give peace to my country, I give it to my conscience. 
" But what," says the financier, " is peace to us with- 



Speech on Conciliation 121 

out money? Your plan gives us no revenue." No! 
But it does ; for it secures to the subject the power of 
REFUSAL, the first of all revenues. Experience is a 
cheat and fact a liar, if this power in the subject of pro- 
portioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not 5 
been found the richest mine of revenue ever discovered 
by the skill or by the fortune of man. It does not in- 
deed vote you ^152,750 iis. 2|ths, nor any other 
paltry limited sum ; but it gives the strong-box itself, the 
fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise 10 
amongst a people sensible of freedom. Posiia luditur 
area. Cannot you in England, cannot you at this time 
of day, cannot you, an House of Commons, trust to the 
principle which has raised so mighty a revenue and ac- 
cumulated a debt of near 140 millions in this country? 15 
Is this principle to be true in England and false every- 
where else? Is it not true in Ireland? Has it not 
hitherto been true in the colonies? Why should you 
presume that in any country a body duly constituted for 
any function will neglect to perform its duty and abdicate 20 
its trust? Such a presumption would go against all 
governments in all modes. But in truth this dread of 
penury of supply from a free assembly has no foundation 
in nature. For first observe, that besides the desire 
which all men have naturally of supporting the honor of 25 
their own government, that sense of dignity and that 
security to property which ever attends freedom has a 
tendency to increase the stock ^ of the free community. 
^Accumulated capital. 



122 Speech on Conciliation 

Most may be taken where most is accumulated. And 
what is the soil or climate where experience has not uni- 
formly proved that the voluntary flow of heaped-up 
plenty, bursting from the weight of its own rich luxuri- 
5 ance, has ever run with a more copious stream of revenue 
than could be squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed 
indigence by the straining of all the politic ^ machinery in 
the world ? 

Next, we know that parties must ever exist in a free 

10 country. We know, too, that the emulations of such 
parties, their contradictions, their reciprocal necessities, 
their hopes and their fears, must send them all in their 
turns to him that holds the balance of the state. The 
parties are the gamesters ; but government keeps the 

15 table, and is sure to be the winner in the end. When 
this game is played, I really think it is more to be feared 
that the people will be exhausted than that government 
will not be supplied. Whereas, whatever is got by acts 
of absolute power, ill obeyed because odious, or by con- 

20 tracts ill kept because constrained, will be narrow, feeble, 
uncertain and precarious. 

Ease would retract 
Vows made in pain, as violent and void. 

I, for one, protest against compounding our demands. 

25 1 declare against compounding for a poor limited sum 

the immense, ever-growing, eternal debt which is due to 

generous government from protected freedom. And so 

1 Political. 



Speech on Conciliation 123 

may I speed in the great object I propose to you, as I 
think it would not only be an act of injustice, but would 
be the worst economy in the world, to compel the colo- 
nies to a sum certain, either in the way of ransom or in 
the way of compulsory compact. 5 

But to clear up my ideas on this subject : a revenue 
from America transmitted hither, — do not delude your- 
selves ; you never can receive it, — no, not a shilling. 
We have experience that from remote countries it is not 
to be expected. If, when you attempted to extract reve- lo 
nue from Bengal, you were obliged to return in loan what 
you had taken in imposition, what can you expect from 
North America? For certainly, if ever there was a 
country qualified to produce wealth, it is India; or an 
institution for the transmission, it is the East India Com- 15 
pany. America has none of these aptitudes. If America 
gives you taxable objects on which you lay your duties 
here, and gives you at the same time a surplus by a for- 
eign sale of her commodities to pay the duties on these 
objects which you tax at home, she has performed her 20 
part to the British revenue. But with regard to her own 
internal establishments, she may, — I doubt not she will, 
— contribute in moderation. I say in moderation ; for 
she ought not to be permitted to exhaust herself. She 
ought to be reserved to a war, the weight of which, with 25 
the enemies that we are most Hkely to have, must be con- 
siderable in her quarter of the globe. There she may 
serve you, and serve you essentially.^ 
1 Indispensably. 



124 Speech on Conciliation 

For that service, for all service, whether of revenue, 
trade or empire, my trust is in her interest in the British 
Constitution. My hold of the colonies is in the close 
affection which grows from common names, from kindred 
5 blood, from similar privileges and equal protection. 
These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong 
as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea 
of their civil rights associated with your government, — 
they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under 

lo heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. 
But let it be once understood that your government may 
be one thing and their privileges another ; that these two 
things may exist without any mutual relation, the cement 
is gone, the cohesion is loosened and everything hastens 

15 to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wis- 
dom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as 
the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to 
our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of 
England worship freedom, they will turn their faces to- 

20 wards you. The more they multiply, the more friends 
you will have ; the more ardently they love liberty, the 
more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can 
have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. 
They may have it from Spain ; they may have it from 

25 Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your 

true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can 

have from none but you. This is the commodity of 

price ^ of which you have the monopoly. This is the 

1 The priceless commodity. 



speech on Conciliation 125 

true Act of Navigation which binds to you the commerce 
of the colonies, and through them secures to you the 
wealth of the world. Deny them this participation of 
freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally 
made and must still preserve the unity of the empire. 5 
Do not entertain so weak an imagination as that your 
registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your suffer- 
ances, your cockets and your clearances, are what form 
the great securities of your commerce. Do not dream 
that your letters of office and your instructions and your 10 
suspending clauses are the things that hold together the 
great contexture of the mysterious whole. These things 
do not make your government. Dead instruments, pas- 
sive tools as they are, it is the spirit of the English com- 
munion that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It 15 
is the spirit of the Enghsh Constitution, which, infused 
through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigo- 
rates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the 
minutest member. 

Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us 20 
here in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the 
Land Tax Act which raises your revenue ? that it is the 
annual vote in the Committee of Supply which gives you 
your army? or that it is the Mutiny Bill which inspires 
it with bravery and discipline? No! surely no! It is 25 
the love of the people ; it is their attachment to their 
government, from the sense of the deep stake they have 
in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 
and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience 



126 Speech on Conciliation 

without which your army would be a base rabble, and 
your navy nothing but rotten timber. 

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and 
chimerical to the profane^ herd of those vulgar^ and 
5 mechanical politicians who have no place among us, — a 
sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is 
gross and material ; and who, therefore, far from being 
qualified to be directors of the great movement of em- 
pire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to 

10 men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and 
master principles, which in the opinion of such men as I 
have mentioned have no substantial existence, are in truth 
everything and all in all. "Magnanimity in poHtics is not 
seldom the truest wisdom ; and a great empire and little 

15 minds go ill together. - If we are conscious of our station, 
and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our situa- 
tion and ourselves, we ought to auspicate all our public 
proceedings on America with the old warning of the 
church, Sursum corda f We ought to elevate our minds 

20 to the greatness of that trust to which the order ^ of Provi- 
dence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this 
high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilder- 
ness into a glorious empire, and have made the most 
extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by de- 

25 stroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the 
happiness of the human race. Let us get an American 
revenue as we have got an American empire. English 

1 Corrupt. 2 Commonplace. ^ Plan. 



Speech on Conciliation 127 

privileges have made it all that it is ; English privileges 
alone will make it all it can be. 

In full confidence of this unalterable truth, I now {quod 
felix faustumque sit!) lay the first stone of the Temple 
of Peace ; and I move you, — 5 

That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 
the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parlia- ic 
ment. 



Upon this resolution the previous question was put and 
carried : for the previous question, 270; against it, 78. 

As the propositions were opened' separately in the 
body of the speech, the reader perhaps may wish to see 15 
the whole of them together in the form in which they 
were moved for. The first four motions and the last had 
the previous question put on them. The others were 
negatived. The words in itahcs were, by an amendment 
that was carried, left out of the motion ; which will appear 2c 
in the journals, though it is not the practice to insert such 
amendments in the votes. 

Moved, 

That the colonies and plantations of Great Britain in North 
America, consisting of fourteen separate governments, and con- 25 
taining two millions and upwards of free inhabitants, have not had 

1 Presented. 



128 Speech on Conciliation 

the liberty and privilege of electing and sending any knights and 
burgesses, or others, to represent them in the high court of Parlia- 
ment. 

That the said colonies and plantations have been liable to, and 
Sbounden by, several subsidies, payments, rates and taxes, given 
and granted by Parliament, though the said colonies and planta- 
tions have not their knights and burgesses in the said high court 
of Parliament, of their own election, to represent the condition of 
their country ; by lack whereof they have been oflejiihnes touched 
10 and grieved by subsidies given, granted and assented to, in the said 
court, in a manner prejudicial to the commonwealth, quiettiess, rest 
and peace of the subjects inhabiting zvithin the same. 

That, from the distance of the said colonies and from other 
circumstances, no method hath hitherto been devised for procuring 
15 a representation in Parliament for the said colonies. 

That each of the said colonies hath within itself a body, chosen 
in part or in the whole by the freemen, freeholders or other free 
inhabitants thereof, commonly called the general assembly, or gen- 
eral court, with powers legally to raise, levy and assess, according 
20 to the several usages of such colonies, duties and taxes towards 
defraying all sorts of public services. 

That the said general assemblies, general courts, or other bodies 
legally qualified as aforesaid, have at sundry times freely granted 
several large subsidies and public aids for his Majesty's service, 
25 according to their abilities, when required thereto by letter from 
one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state; and that their 
right to grant the same and their cheerfulness and sufficiency in the 
said grants have been at sundry times acknowledged by Parliament. 

That it hath been found by experience that the manner of grant- 

30 ing the said supplies and aids by the said general assemblies hath 

been more agreeable to the said colonies, and more beneficial and 



speech on Conciliation 129 

conducive to the public service, than the mode of giving and grant- 
ing aids in Parliament, to be raised and paid in the said colonies. 

That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the seventh year 
of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for granting 
certain duties in the British colonies and plantations in America; 5 
f or alluvvi ng a drawback of the duties of customs upon the expor- 
tation from this kingdom of coffee and cocoanuts of the produce 
of the said colonies or plantations; for discontinuing the draw- 
backs payable on China earthenware exported to America; and 
for more effectually preventing the clandestine running of goods in 10 
the said colonies and plantations." 

That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 
year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act to dis- 
continue, in such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, 
the landing and discharging, lading or shipping, of goods, wares 15 
and merchandise, at the town and within the harbor of Boston, in 
the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America." 

That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 
year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for the 
impartial administration of justice in the cases of persons questioned 20 
for any acts done by them in the execution of the law, or for the 
suppression of riots and tumults, in the province of Massachusetts 
Bay, in New England." 

That it may be proper to repeal an act made in the fourteenth 
year of the reign of his present Majesty, entitled, " An act for the 25 
better regulating the government of the province of the Massa- 
chusetts Bay, in New England." 

That it may be proper to explain and amend an act made in the 
thirty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry the Eighth, entitled, 
"An act for the trial of treasons committed out of the king's 30 
dominions." 

UUKKE ON CONXILIATION — 9 



130 Speech on Conciliation 

That from the time when the general assembly, or general court, 
of any colony or plantation in North America shall have appointed, 
by act of assembly duly confirmed, a settled salary to the offices of 
the chief justice and other judges of the superior court, it may be 
5 proper that the said chief justice and other judges of the superior 
courts of such colony shall hold his and their office and offices 
during their good behaviour, and shall not be removed therefrom 
but when the said removal shall be adjudged by his Majesty in 
council, upon a hearing on complaint from the general assembly, 
10 or on a complaint from the governor or council or the house of rep- 
resentatives, severally, of the colony in which the said chief justice 
and other judges have exercised the said offices. 

That it may be proper to regulate the courts of admiralty or vice- 
admiralty authorized by the fifteenth chapter of the fourth of 
15 George the Third, in such a manner as to make the same more 
commodious to those who sue or are sued in the said courts; aitd to 
provide for the more decent maintenance of the judges in the same. 



NOTES 

The heavy marginal figures stand for page, and the lighter ones for line. 

37 : I. I hope, Sir, etc. Speeches in the House of Commons 
are addressed to the Speaker, who is often referred to as the Chair. 
The Speaker at this time was Sir Fletcher Norton (1716-1789), 
" a shrewd, unprincipled man, of good abilities and ofi'ensive 
manners," who held the office from 1770 to 1780. 

37 : 7. My motion. The motion which he was to offer at the 
conclusion of his speech. 

37 : 8. Grand penal bill. The bill introduced by Lord North, 
February 10, 1775. 

37 : 10. Returned to us from the other House. The bill had 
passed the Commons March 8, and been sent to the Lords. The 
Lords had added an amendment extending the provisions of the 
bill to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and South 
Carolina. The bill came back to the Commons for approval in its 
amended form. 

37 : 13. Once more in possession of our deliberative capac- 
ity. Once more in a position to discuss the bill. While the bill 
was before the Lords it could not with propriety be discussed by 
the Commons. 

37 : 19. First day of the session. The session began Novem- 
ber 29, 1774. 

38 : 3. Incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. The 
bill aimed to break down the resistance to the tea duty at the same 
time that it restrained the colonial trade. The union of the two 
objects hardly seems incongruous. 

131 



132 Notes 



38 : 9. When I first, etc. See Introduction, page 24. 

38 : 14. A very high trust. Referring to the idea, often em- 
phasized by Burke, that the powers of government are held by 
rulers in trust for the people. 

38 : 17. More than common pains to instruct myself. 
Burke was probably better informed than any Englishman of his 
time m regard to America. He was the author in part of the 
Account of the European Settlements in America, written in 1757, 
and since 1759 had written much about America for the Annual 
Register. 

38 : 24. Blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. 
Compare Ephesians iv. 14. 

38 : 28, At that period. In 1766, when the Stamp Act was 
repealed. On Burke's position see Introduction, page 24. 

39 : I. Large majority. The vote on the repeal was 275 to 161. 
39 : 10. This interval. The period since 1766. 

39 : 10. More frequent changes. See Introduction, pages 
15-17. The passage and repeal of the Tovvnshend Revenue Act 
was the most important of these changes. 

39 : 26. A worthy member. Rose P\iller. Burke's Speech on 
American Taxation was made on a motion brought forward by 
Fuller to repeal the tea duty. 

39 : 27. Filled the Chair of the American Committee. Pre- 
sided when the House of Commons sat as a Committee of the Whole 
on American affairs. 

40 : 3. Our former methods. The methods of the minority, to 
which Fuller and Burke belonged. 

40 : 5. Public tribunal. Public opinion. 

40 : 22. My honorable friend. Members of the Commons are 
referred to in debate as " the honorable member," " my honorable 
friend," etc., and not by name. 

41 : 4. Except from a seat of authority. Important bills are 
usually brought forward by members of the ministry, not by private 
members. 



Notes 



33 



41:11. Paper government. Burke probably refers, not to any 
particular plan, but generally to schemes of government which are 
not or can not be carried into execution. 

41 : 15. An incurable alienation of our colonies. The idea 
of separation was not general at tliis time, though the possibility of 
it had been clearly foreseen. 

42 : 4. What you are, etc. Burke is here addressing the 
House, not the Speaker. 

42 : 17. Discord fomented from principle. Lord North re- 
tained the tea duty as an assertion of the right of Parliament to tax 
the colonies ; the colonies resisted the tax on the ground that, as 
Englishmen, they could lawfully be taxed only by their own repre- 
sentatives. Each party, therefore, stood upon a principle. 

42 : 25. Unsuspecting confidence. In an address to the in- 
habitants of the colonies represented in the First Continental Con- 
gress, agreed to by the Congress, October 21, 1774, it is said: 
" After the repeal of the Stamp Act, having again resigned our- 
selves to our ancient unsuspicious affections for the parent state, 
and anxious to avoid any controversy with her, in hopes of a favor- 
able alteration in sentiments and measures towards us, we did not 
press our objections against the above-mentioned statutes made 
subsequent to that repeal" (^Journals of Congress, i. 47,48). 

43 : 14. Splendor of the project. February 27, 1775, Lord 
North had unexpectedly laid before the Plouse, in Committee of 
the Whole, the following resolution : " That it is the opinion of 
this Committee, that when the Governour, Council, and Assembly, 
or General Court, of any of his Majesty's Provinces or Colonies in 
America, shall propose to make provision, according to the condi- 
tion, circumstances, and situation of such Province or Colony, for 
contributing their proportion to the common defence, (such pro- 
portion to be raised under the authority of the General Court, or 
General Assembly, of such Province or Colony, and disposable by 
Parliament,) and shall engage to make provision also for the sup- 
port of the Civil Government, and the Administration of Justice, in 



134 



Notes 



such Province or Colony, it will be proper, if such proposal shall be 
approved by his Majesty and the tv^^o Houses of Parliament, and 
for so long as such provision shall be made accordingly, to forbear, 
in respect of such Province or Colony, to levy any Duty, Tax, or 
Assessment, or to impose any farther Duty, Tax, or Assessment, 
except only such Duties as it may be expedient to continue to levy 
or to impose for the regulation of commerce ; the nett produce 
of the Duties last mentioned to be carried to the account of such 
Province or Colony respectively " (Force, AmejHcan Archives, 4th 
series, i. 1598). The resolution, though unsatisfactory to the 
friends of the ministry, w^as agreed to by the House ; July 31, 
hov^^ever, the proposition it contained was rejected by the Conti- 
nental Congress. For the report on it see MacDonald, Select 
Charters, 385-389. 

43 : 15. The noble lord in the blue ribbon. Lord North 
(1732-1792), prime minister from 1770 to 1782. The eldest son 
of a peer enjoys, during the lifetime of his father, the courtesy title 
of Lord, and may sit in the House of Commons. The blue ribbon 
was the badge of a Knight of the Garter, of which order Lord North 
was a member. 

43 : 17. Colony agents. Each colony maintained an agent in 
London to look after its interests. The best-known of the colonial 
agents was Franklin, who at the time represented Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Georgia. Burke was for a time agent 
for New York. 

43 : 18. Mace. The symbol of authority borne by the sergeant- 
at-arms. 

43 : 20. Auction of finance. Referring to the silence of Lord 
North's resolution regarding the amount which each colony should 
pay. 

44 : 2. Menacing front of our address. On the 7th of February 
the two houses of Parliament had voted an address to the king, call- 
ing attention to the rebellious conduct of Massachusetts, declaring 
^hat no part of the sovereign authority over the colonies ought to 



Notes 



^3S 



be relinquished, promising that " whenever any of the colonies shall 
make a proper application to us, we shall be ready to afford them 
every just and reasonable indulgence," and pledging support to the 
king, " at the hazard of our lives and properties," in measures to put 
down the rebellion. Eighteen members of the Lords protested, 
declaring the address a virtual declaration of war. See the Parlia- 
mentary History, xviii. 265-298. 

46:10. Two millions of inhabitants. ^2>.x\cxq{\. {History of the 
United States, iv. 128) gives the following table of estimates, show- 
ing the rapid increase as well as. the number of the population : — 





WHITE 


BLACK 


TOTAL 


1750 


1,040,000 


220,000 


1,260,000 


1754 


1,165,000 


260,000 


1,425,000 


1760 


1,385,000 


310,000 


1,695,000 


1770 


1,850,000 


462,000 


2,312,000 


1780 


2,383,000 


562,000 


2,945,000 



It is to be remembered that all the figures for the population of 
America prior to the first census of the United States, in 1790, rest 
upon estimates only. 

46 : 12. 500,000 others. Negro slaves. 

46:18. Strength with which population shoots. The rapid- 
ity with which population grows. Franklin and others had already 
called attenticui to the rapid increase of numbers in the English 
colonies. 

47 : I. No partial . . . system. Such as Parliament has 
hitherto followed. 

47 : 4. One of those minima. An allusion to the legal maxim, 
De mitiimis non curat lex, the law takes no account of trifles. 

47 : 20. This ground . . . has been trod. This part of the 
subject has been considered. 



136 



Notes 



47:22. A distinguished person. Richard Glover (171 2-1 785), 
then widely popular as a poet. He had appeared before the House, 
March 16, on behalf of the West India planters, who petitioned 
Parliament for relief from the injury threatened by the non-impor- 
tation agreement, known as the "Association," adopted by the 
American Congress the previous October. For the text of the 
Association see MacDonald, Select Charters, pp. 362-367. 

47 : 22. At your bar. The entrance to the Commons chamber 
is closed by a rod, beyond which only members and officers of the 
House may go. Persons, not members, who are examined or heard 
by the House stand at the bar. 

47 : 23. Thirty-five years. Burke is in error here. It was in 
1742 — thirty-three years before — that Glover appeared before 
the House on behalf of some three hundred London merchants, 
who had petitioned for better protection for their commerce 
against Spanish privateers. 

48 : 22. Vouchers. Used here in the sense of authorities or 
sources. 

48 : 22. Accounts on your table. Accounts officially presented 
to the House. 

48 : 24. Davenant. Charles Davenant (1656-17 14). He was 
made inspector general of exports and imports in 1705. He 
wrote on economic subjects, his best-known work being his Dis- 
course on Revenue and Trade. 

48 : 28. Terminating ... in the colonies. English manu- 
factured goods were sent to Africa and exchanged for slaves, who 
were sold almost exclusively in America. 

49 : 2. North American. Often applied collectively to all the 
English colonies in America except those in the West Indies. 

51 : 3. Mr. Speaker, etc. Notice the skillful transition 
from a statistical exhibit to the highly rhetorical passage which 
follows. 

51 : 4. It is good for us to be here. Compare Matthew xvii. 
1-4. 



Notes 137 

51 : 12. My Lord Bathurst. Allen Bathurst (1684-1775). 
He became Earl Bathurst in 1772. He was on terms of intimacy 
with Congreve, Swift, Prior, Addison, Pope, Gay, and other literary 
men of his time. He died about six months after the delivery of 
this speech. 

51 : 14. Of an age ... to comprehend. Lord Bathurst 
entered Parliament in 1705. 

51 : 15. Acta parentum, etc. To be able to study the deeds 
of his forefathers, and to learn what virtue is. Altered from Virgil, 
Eclogues, iv. 26, 27. 

51 : 20. In the fourth generation the third prince. George 
in, the third prince of the House of Brunswick to become king 
of England, was the grandson of George H, whom he succeeded. 

51 : 22. Twelve years. The reign of George III began in 
1760. 

51 : 24. Was to be made Great Britain. The union of Eng- 
land and Scotland in Great Britain did not take place until 1707. 

51 : 25. His son. Henry, Baron Apsley, made lord chancellor 
in 1771. 

52 : II. Taste of death. See Mattheiv xvi. 28; John viii. 52; 
Julius Ccesar, ii. 2. Tj'i) '• " The valiant never taste of death but 
once." 

53 : 3. The export. The value of the exports. 

53 : 14. Detail the imports. Give in detail the list of articles 
imported. 

53 : 23. Feeding plentifully their own growing multitude. 
Americans were probably much better fed at this time than English- 
men. There was little poverty, and the standard of living, though 
simple, was higher for the middle and lower classes than in England. 

53 : 28. Corn. Not Indian corn, but wheat, barley, and other 
grains used for making bread. 

54 : 5. The full breast. A reference to the story of a Roman, 
who, condemned to death by starvation, was visited in prison by 
his daughter, who nourished him with milk from her own breast. 



138 Notes 

54 : 10. Excite your envy. In 1764 Grenville "adopted the 
plan of gradually giving up the bounty to the British whale fishery, 
which would be a saving of thirty thousand pounds a year to the 
treasury, and of relieving the American fishery from the inequality 
of the discriminating duty, except the old subsidy, which was 
scarcely one per cent. This is the most liberal act of Grenville's 
administration, of which the merit is not diminished by the fact 
that the American whale fishery was superseding the English 
under every discouragement. ... So this valuable branch of 
trade, which produced annually three hundred thousand pounds, 
and which would give employment to many shipwrights and 
other artificers, and to three thousand seamen, was resigned to 
America" (Bancroft, History of the United States, y. 185). This 
important industry would be cut off by the bill now before 
ParHament. 

54 : 23. Serpent. The Hydrus, or Water Serpent, a small 
constellation within the Antarctic Circle. 

54 : 23. Falkland Island. The Falkland Islands, discovered 
in 1592, and occupied successively by France and Spain, passed 
into' the control of England in 1771. Whalers resorted to the 
island's for provisions and water. 

55 : I. Run the longitude. An expression of uncertain mean- 
ing. Apparently it means to run east or west, though the direction 
here is south. 

55 ' 3- Vexed. "The still-vex'd Bermoothes," Tempest, i. 2. 
229. " As mad as the vex'd sea," King Lear, iv. 4. 2. 

55 : II. Owe little or nothing to any care of ours. The sen- 
tence recalls the famous speech of Isaac Barre against the Stamp 
Act: "They [the colonies] planted by your care! No; your op- 
pression planted them in America. . . . They nourished up by 
your indulgence ! They grew by your neglect of them." 

55 : 23. In the gross. As a whole. 

56 : 2. Wield the thunder. An allusion to Jove and his 
thunderbolts. 



Notes 139 



57 : 2. Caught by a foreign enemy. It was widely feared, 
and with good reason, that, notwithstanding the peace of 1763, 
P'rance and Spain would seize the first favorable opportunity to 
renew the war. 

57 : 6. Break the American spirit. The Americans had been 
referred to in the debates as rebels who must be compelled to 
submit. 

57 : II. Our ancient indulgence. General Burgoyne had said, 
April 19, 1774, in the debate on the repeal of the tea duty : " I look 
upon America to be our child, which I think we have already spoiled 
by too much indulgence." Until 1764 no serious attempt was made 
to enforce the Navigation Acts, nor had the internal affairs of the 
colonies as a whole been much interfered with. 

58 : 9. Descendants of Englishmen. Probably nine-tenths of 
the American colonists outside of Canada were of English descent. 
The principal foreign admixtures were the Dutch in New York, the 
Germans in Pennsylvania, and the Scotch-Irish in North and South 
Carolina. The population of Canada, on the other hand, was pre- 
dominantly French. 

58 : 12. Emigrated from y(ftl. The great period of emigration 
to America was the first half of the seventeenth century, when the 
people were struggling against James I and Charles I. 

58 : 13. Took this bias and direction. Virginia after 1625, and 
Massachusetts from the beginning, were largely free from English 
control. 

58 : 16. Liberty according to English ideas. The first charter 
of Virginia (1606) declares "that all and every the persons, being 
our subjects, which shall dwell and inhabit wilhin every or any 
of the said several colonies and plantations, and every of their 
children which shall happen to be born within any of the limits and 
precincts of the said several colonies and plantations, shall have 
and enjoy all liberties, franchises, and immunities, within any of 
our other dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been 
abiding and born within this our realm of England, or any other 



140 Notes 

of our said dominions." Similar guarantees are found in later 
charters. 

58 : 18. Sensible object. A tangible object, one that may be 
perceived by the senses ; not theoretical or abstract. There was 
a good deal of talk at this time about abstract liberty. 

58 : 22. Great contests for freedom. For example, the struggle 
which ended in the grant of Magna Charta, and those which con- 
cerned subsidies, benevolences, monopolies, ship money, etc. 

58 : 24. Ancient commonwealths. Particularly in Rome. 

58 : 26. Several orders. Social classes, as patricians and 
plebeians. 

59 : 7. Parchments. Documents. Statutes and important 
documents were written on parchment. 

59 : 7. Blind usages. Usages which were established imper- 
ceptibly, and to which no definite origin could be assigned. 

59 : 10. In theory it ought to be so. A rare instance with 
Burke of resort to theoretical proof. 

59 : 20. Fixed and attached. Supply " itself." The meaning 
is that the colonies regarded the right of self-taxation as the chief 
test of liberty. • 

59 : 29. Your mode of governing. The colonies had never, 
until 1765, been taxed directly by England. 

60 : 6. Popular. Controlled by the people, either directly, as in 
the town meeting, or indirectly, as in government by a legislature 
elected by the people. 

60 : 7. Merely popular. Wholly popular, as in the New Eng- 
land towns. 

60 : 10. Aversion from. Aversion to is now used. 
60 : 18. That kind. Dissenters. 
60 : 20. Persuasion. State of mimd. 

60 : 28. Authority. The secular government, or state. 

61 : 6. All Protestantism ... is a sort of dissent. An 
allusion to the original meaning of Protestant as " one who 
protests," 



Notes 141 



61. : 7. The religion most prevalent. Puritanism, in the form 
of Congregationalism, with the theology of Calvin. 

61 : 9. Dissidence of dissent. Dissent carried to an extreme. 

62 : 8. Freedom is to them, etc. Burke here touches upon one 
of the chief characteristics of Southern society. 

62 : 10. Freedom . . . may be united. The presence of slave 
labor early operated to discourage free w^hite labor in the South. 

62 : 22. Gothic. In the sense, common in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, of "Teutonic" or "Germanic." The Goths, properly so 
called, w^ere not the ancestors of the English, 

62 : 23. Were the Poles. Until 1772, when the first partition 
of the country was made by Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Nine 
tenths of the population were serfs. 

63:3. Numerous and powerful. One of the papers laid before 
Parliament, in 1766, relating to the disturbances over the Stamp 
Act, says of New York: "The gentlemen of the law, both the 
judges and the principal practitioners at the bar, are either owners 
or strongly connected in family interest with the proprietors in 
general. The gentlemen of the law some years since entered into 
an association, with intention among other things to assume the 
direction of government upon them by the influence they had in 
the assembly, gained by their family connection and by the profes- 
sion of the law, whereby they are unavoidably in the secrets of 
many families. Many court their friendship, and all dread their 
hatred ; by this means, though few of them are members, they rule 
the house of the assembly in all matters of importance " (^Parlia- 
mentary History, xvi. 125). 

63 : 5. The Congress. The First Continental Congress, which 
met at Philadelphia September 5, 1774. 

63 : 10. Plantations. A common synonym at this time for 
" colonies." 

63:12. Blackstone's Commentaries. Sir William Blackstone 
( 1 723-1 780) published his Coninientaries on the Laws of England 
between 1765 and 1769. The work at once became popular, and 



142 Notes 

long held its place as the best introduction to the study of English 
law. 

63 : 13. General Gage. Thomas Gage (i 721-1787). In 1763 
he was made commander in chief of the English forces in America, 
and in 1774 governor and captain general of Massachusetts. He 
arrived in Boston in May, 1774. 

63 : 14. A letter on your table. January 19, 1775, Lord North 
had laid before the House a letter from Gage, dated August 27, 
1774, describing his unsuccessful attempts to enforce the pro- 
visions of the Massachusetts Government Act which forbade town 
meetings. 

63 : 17. By successful chicane. The Massachusetts Govern- 
ment Act went into effect August I, 1774, and after that date no 
town meetings could legally be held. The Boston town meeting 
held in July was adjourned until August 9, and again until October. 
The selectmen claimed that an adjourned meeting was not a new 
meeting, but a continuation of a former one, and therefore not in 
violation of the act. 

63 : 22. My honorable and learned friend. Lord Thurlow, 
the attorney general, and as such a member of the ministry. 

63 : 23. On the floor. The members of the House of Commons 
sit on benches, which are arranged in tiers, the lowest, that on the 
floor at the right of the Speaker, being reserved for members of the 
ministry. There is no provision of chairs and desks as in an Ameri- 
can legislature or in Congress. 

63 : 24. Mark ... for animadversion. Thurlow was taking 
notes, and was the first to speak in reply to Burke. 

64 : 2. Abeunt, etc. One's pursuits become habits. 
64 : 5. Mercurial cast. Active character or nature. 
64:19. Winged ministers of vengeance. The navy. 

64 : 2T^. So far shalt thou go, and no farther. Compare 
Job xxxviii. 1 1. Hume, the first volume of whose History of Eng- 
land liad been published in 1754, had popularized the legend of 
Canute and his courtiers. 



Notes 143 

65 : 9. Spain in her provinces. In Central and South 
America. The Spanish system of colonial administration was 
rapidly breaking down. 

65 : 12. Detached empire. Empire whose parts or colonies 
are separated from the parent state. 

65 : 16. First mover of government. An allusion to the 
Ptolemaic system of astronomy, in which the heavenly bodies are 
represented as forming a series of spheres, with the earth as the 
common center. The outermost sphere was called the primum 
mobile, or " first moved," and communicated its movement to the 
others. The " first mover " here is Great Britain. 

65:18. Grown with the growth, etc. '^oYo^t, Essay on Man, 
ii, 136 : " Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength." 

65 : 21. However lawful. The precise extent of the power of 
Parliament over the colonies had never been defined, but the better 
opinion of lawyers was that the power was absolute, and to be 
exercised at the discretion of Parliament. 

65 : 24. This excess. The violent proceedings in the colonies. 

66 : 7. With all its imperfections. Compare Hamlet, i. 5. 

78, 79. 

66:16. Untractable. Now usually " intractable." 

66 : 24. The popular part. The representative assemblies of 

the colonial legislatures. 

66 : 25. Constitution. System of government. 

66 : 26. Its first vital movement. The colonial legislatures 
were summoned by the governor, who in most colonies was ap- 
pointed by the crown. 

67 : 3. None but an obedient assembly should sit. The New 
York Assembly had been suspended in 1767 for refusing to comply 
fully with the provisions of the Quartering Act (see MacDonald, 
Select ChaTters, 31 7-320). Many of the assemblies had been dis- 
solved in 1 768-1 769 for expressing approval of the Massachusetts 
Circular {ibid., 330-335). There had been numerous other in- 
stances since. 



144 Notes 



67 : 8. Formed a government. In the several colonies com- 
mittees of correspondence had assumed practical direction of 
affairs. The enforcement of the "Association" was in the hands 
of committees. The formation of provincial congresses was also 
going on. 

67 : 12. Lord Dunmore. John Murray, fourth Earl of Dun- 
more ( 1 732-1 809). He became governor of Virginia in 1772. 
His hostility to the popular party in the colonies made his testi- 
mony paiticularly valuable. 

67 : 13. The fragments on your table. A letter from Dun- 
more, dated December 24, 1774, was laid before the House Febru- 
ary 15, 1775. It was in part as follows: "As to the power of 
government which your lordship . . . directs should be exerted 
to counteract the dangerous measures pursuing here, I can assure 
your lordship, that it is entirely disregarded, if not wholly over- 
turned. There is not a justice of peace in Virginia that acts, save 
as a committee man {i.e., as a member of one of the committees 
appointed to execute the Association) : the abolishing the courts 
of justice was the first step taken, in which the men of fortune and 
pre-eminence joined equally with the lowest and meanest. The 
general court of judicature of the colony is much in the same pre- 
dicament; for though there are at least a majority of his Majesty's 
council who, with myself, are the judges of that court, that would 
steadily perform their duty, yet the lawyers have absolutely refused 
to attend, nor indeed would the people allow them to attend, or 
evidences to appear. Independent companies, &c. so universally 
supported, who have set themselves up superior to all other au- 
thority, under the auspices of their congress, the laws of which 
they talk of in a stile of respect, and treat with marks of reverence, 
which they never bestowed on their legal government, or the laws 
proceeding from it, I can assure your lordship, that I have dis- 
covered no instance where the interposition of government, in the 
feeble state to which it is reduced, could serve any other purpose 
than to suffer the disgrace of a disappointment, and thereby afford 



Notes 145 



matter of great exultation to its enemies, and increase their influ- 
ence o/er the minds of the people " (JPa}'lia7nentary History, xviii. 

3H, 315)- 

68 : 2. Wholly abrogated the ancient government of Mas- 
sachusetts. By the Massachusetts Government Act, May 20, 1774. 
The important parts of the Act are in MacDonald, Select Charters, 

343-350- 

68 : 4. Anarchy. Not in the sense of disorder, but of the 
absence of an estal)lished government. It had been frequently 
predicted in the debates that the act would restore quiet and 
secure obedience. 

68 : 6. Anarchy is found tolerable. The act was generally 
disregarded, but the colony continued without disorder under the 
committees of correspondence, the Provincial Congress, and the 
officials of the town governments. 

68 : 9. Without public council, etc. Most of the members of 
the council who had been chosen under the new system had resigned, 
as had also the judges, whose salaries were to be paid by the crown. 
The resignations were not all voluntary. 

69 : 20. Giving up the colonies. Proposed in 1774 by 
Dr. Josiah Tucker (1711-1799), Dean of Gloucester, in a tract 
entitled, The Triie Interest of Great Britain set forth in regard to 
the Colonies, and the only Means of living itt Peace and Harinony 
with them. The work attracted much attention, and was reprinted 
in America. On the plan see Lecky, History of England, iii. 421- 
424. Burke minimizes the importance of the suggestion. 

70 : 8. No further grants of land. The region between East 
and West Florida and the great lakes, and the Appalachian Moun- 
tains and the Mississippi, was crown land, and might be granted to 
individuals or companies at discretion. 

70 : 25. Back settlements. The frontier, often referred to as 
the " back country." 

71:6. Hordes of English Tartars. An allusion to the invasion 
of Europe by the Goths and Huns in the fourth and fifth centuries. 

BURKE ON CONCILIATION — lO 



146 Notes 



71 : 9. Collectors. Of customs rather than of taxes, the latter 
being chosen by the people. 

71 : 10. Slaves. Minor officials, whose continuance in office, in 
the then corrupt state of politics, depended on slavish obedience to 
those above them. 

71 : 13. Increase and multiply. Compare Genesis \x. i. 

71 : 16. Express charter. Compare Psalm cxv. 16. Grants 
of land were set forth in written documents known as charters or 
patents. 

71 : 22. Wax and parchment. *' The observance of legal 
forms and modes of procedure." 

71 : 22. Thrown each tract . . . into districts. Indicated its 
boundaries and extended government over it. 

72 : 4. A system of this kind. The Navigation Acts or Acts 
of Trade. 

72 : 25. Spoliatis arma, etc. Arms still remain to be plun- 
dered. 

73 : 5. Your speech would betray you. See Matthew xx\\. 73. 

73 : 16. Burn their books. See Aas xix. 19. 

74 : I. Advocates and panegyrists. Dr. Johnson, in Taxa- 
tion no Tyraiiny, lately published, had commended it. 

74 : 2. Into any opinion of it. Into thinking well of it. 

74 : 4. Would not always be accepted. Governor Dunmore 
tried it in Virginia in November, 1775, when freedom M'as prom- 
ised to all negro slaves and indented servants who should join his 
force ; but few responded. See Bancroft, History of the United 
States, viii. 223-225. 

74 : 17. That very nation which has sold them. England 
was at this time the principal slave-trading nation, and a large 
amount of capital was invested in the trade. 

74 : 19. Refusal. The second article of the Association read: 
" We will neither import nor purchase any slave imported after the 
first day of December next [1774] ; after which time we will wholly 
discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it 



Notes 1 47 



ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels nor sell our commodities or 
manufactures to those who are concerned in it." There had al- 
ways been a strong opposition in America to the slave trade, 
but Great Britain forced slaves on the colonies notwithstanding. 
Up to this time more than thirty acts of the Virginia Assembly 
imposing restrictions on the trade had been set aside by the king 
in council. 

74 : 22. An African vessel. An English or colonial vessel 
from x\frica. 

74 : 23, Carolina. North and South Carolina were separate 
colonies, but the old name of Carolina was still often applied to 
them. 

74 : 24. Angola. A district on the west coast of Africa from 
which large numbers of slaves were shipped. 

74 : 25. Guinea captain. An English captain of a ship trad- 
ing with Guinea. 

75 : 3- " Ye gods." From Martinus Scriblerus, or the Art of 
Sinking in Poetry, the joint work of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, 
chiefly the latter. See Pope, Works (Edition 1753), vi, 165- 
223. 

75 : 14. Prosecute ... as criminal. The notion of treat- 
ing the colonists as criminals had frequently been brought forward 
in the debates. 

75 : 21. Bands of men. Such as the Sons of Liberty, and the 
organized mobs which had compelled the resignation of judges 
and other officers. 

76 : 2. Sir Edward Coke. An eminent lawyer, 1552- 1634. 
At the trial of Ralegh for treason, in 1603, Coke denounced the 
prisoner in a most scandalous manner. "The confidentist traitor 
that ever came at a bar," " the most vile and execrable traitor that 
ever lived," " thy vituperous treasons," were some of the expressions 
used. 

76 : 6. Upon the very same title that I am. Elected by 
popular vote as I am. 



148 Notes 

76 : 24. Ex vi termini, from the force of the term. 

78 : 14. Those very persons. The majority in Parliament. 

78 : 16. Declaring a rebellion. The address to the king, 
Feb. 9, 1775, had asserted "that a part of your Majesty's subjects 
in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay have proceeded so far to 
resist the authority of the supreme Legislature that a rebellion at 
this time actually exists within the said Province." Eighteen 
Lords entered a protest against the address. The protest, proba- 
bly drawn up by Burke, declared that " no legal grounds were laid 
in argument or in fact to show that a rebellion, properly so called, did 
exist in Massachusetts Bay, when the papers of the latest date, and 
from whence alone we derive our information, were written. The 
overt acts to wliich the species of treason, affirmed in the address, 
ought to be applied, were not established, nor any offenders marked 
out. But a general mass of the acts of turbulence, said to be done 
at various times and places, and of various natures, were all thrown 
together to make out one general constructive treason. Neither was 
there any sort of proof of the continuance of any unlawful force 
from whence we could infer that a rebellion does now exist. And 
we are the more cautious of pronouncing any part of his Majesty's 
dominions to be in actual rebellion, because the cases of construc- 
tive treason under that branch of the 25th of Edward the 3rd, which 
describes the crime of rebellion, have been already so far extended 
by the judges, and the distinctions thereupon so nice and subtle, 
that no prudent man ought to declare any single person in that 
situation, without the clearest evidence of uncontrovertible overt 
acts, to warrant such a declaration. Much less ought so high an 
authority as both Houses of Parliament, to denounce so severe a 
judgment against a considerable part of his Majesty's subjects, by 
which his forces may think themselves justified in commencing a 
war, without any further order or commission " {^Parliainentary 
History, xviii, 294, 295). 

78 : 17. Formerly addressed. In February, 1769, the two 
Houses of Parliament had presented an address to the king urging 



Notes 149 



that Governor Bernard be directed " to take the most effectual 
methods" for apprehending the persons responsible for the recent 
disorders in Massachusetts, " with a view to sending them to Eng- 
land for trial, under a statute passed in the reign of Henry VIII 
for the trial of treasons committed out of the kingdom." Burke 
discussed the proposal in his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777. 
79 : 4. Penal laws. Burke enumerates them in one of his 
resolutions, pp. 106, 107. 

79 : 24. The colonies complain. See the Declaration and 
f?esolves of the First Continental Congress, Oct. 14, 1774 (MacDon- 
a\d, Select Charters, 356-361). The fourth resolution declared: 
"That the foundation of English liberty, and all free government, 
is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council : 
and as the English colonists are not represented, and from their 
local and other circumstances, cannot properly be represented, in 
the Biitish Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive 
power of legislation in their several provincial legislatures, where 
their right of representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of 
taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their 
sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accus- 
tomed." 

80 : 12. Profound learning. The question of the right of 
Parliament to tax the colonies had been for more than ten years 
the subject of earnest and learned discussion in both England and 
America. For a summary by Burke of the arguments, see the 
Anmml Register, 1766, pp. 37-44. 

81 : I. Serbonian bog. From Paradise Lost, ii. 592-594. 

81 : 22. Unity of spirit. See / Corinthians xii. 4 ; Ephe- 
sians iv. 3. 

82 : 27. American financiers. Men interested in taxing the 
colonies merely for the sake of revenue. 

83 : 6. Further views. It had been frequently urged that, 
if the assertion of the taxing powder were given up, the colonies 
would be encouraged to demand further concessions. 



150 Notes 

83 : 7. Trade laws. Navigation Acts. 

83 : II. A gentleman of real moderation. George Rice 
(1742-1779), in a speech, April 19, 1774, on the repeal of the tea 
duty. 

83 : 22. Futile and useless. The enforcement of the Acts of 
Trade as a whole had in fact been very lax, and in consequence the 
interference with the natural growth of colonial trade had not 
been great. 

84:17. The pamphlet. By Dean Tucker. 

84 : 27. True ground of the quarrel. The primary objection 
of the colonies was to taxation, not to the regulation of their 
trade. 

85 : 8. Not a shadow of evidence. The statement is, in a way, 
too strong. There had been occasional protests against the Acts 
of Trade. The systematic evasion, however, of such acts as bore 
heavily on American trade made the protests of little general im- 
portance. 

85 : 25. Will go further. Will demand further concessions. 

86 : 24. Austrian family. Charles I of Spain, grandson of the 
Emperor Maximilian, became the Emperor Charles V in 15 19. 
The dynasty ended with the death of Charles II, in 1700. 

86 : 27. Philip the Second, 1 527-1 598. 

87 : I. Not chosen the most perfect standard. " He (Philip) 
lived to see the vast strength which fell to him as a legacy slip out 
of his hands, and to see Spain sink to a condition of comparative 
weakness" (Fisher). 

87 : 9. English conquest. By Henry II, in 1172. 

87 : 10. No Parliament. The Irish were divided into tribes 
or clans, with a chief at the head of each. 

87 : 14. Such as England then enjoyed. The Great Council 
of barons and representatives of the church. Representatives from 
cities and boroughs were first summoned to Parliament in 1265. 

87 : 21. Magna Charta, The Great Charter extorted from 
John in 1215. 



Notes 1 5 1 

87 : 27. Not at first extended. It was not until 1494, in the 
reign of Henry VII, that "it was enacted that all English laws in 
force at that time should be obeyed in Ireland " (Gardiner, SUi- 
denis' History of England, 351). 

88 : 2. Your privileges. The privileges of the English Pale — 
the region about Dublin to which English authority was for many 
years restricted. 

88 : 2. Sir John Davies. 1569-1626. He published in 1612 
the Discovery of the trice Causes why Ireland was never entirely 
Stibdued nor brought under Obedience of the Crown of England 
until the Beginning of his Majesty's happy Reign. 

88 : 5. Military government. The Earl of Essex and Lord 
Mountjoy had been sent to Ireland in 1599 and 1600 to put down 
rebellion. 

88 : 20. Glorious Revolution. The English Revolution of 1688. 
" Glorious " because a victory for Whig principles, in which Burke 
believed. 

88 : 21. This has made Ireland, etc. The picture is over- 
drawn. The treatment of Ireland by England had for centuries 
been discreditable, and the relations between the two countries 
were almost always strained, but Ireland could hardly be called a 
"great and flourishing kingdom " at this time. 

89 : 8. Irish pensioners. Pensioners, many of them English- 
men, paid out of the revenue from Ireland. Lecky characterizes 
the system at this time as " scandalous." 

89 : 15. Henry the Third. There was intermittent war be- 
tween England and Wales throughout the first half of the thirteenth 
century. After the defeat and death of Simon de Monlfort at Eves- 
ham, in 1265, Llewellyn, Prince of Wales, who had joined Earl Simon 
against Henry III, submitted and did homage. 

89 : 16. Edward the First. War was renewed in 1277, and 
resulted in the conquest of the country by the English. The Stat- 
ute of Wales, a body of laws established in 1284, provided for the 
government of the country. 



152 Notes 

8g : 17. Not looked upon. The union of Wales and England 
was not completed until 1536. 

89 : 21. Lords Marchers. Lords of the marches, or border 
territories, to whom had been given authority to conquer and 
govern so much of the country as they were able. Around the 
castles of the marchers the towns of Wales grew up. The system 
was not established by Edward I, but had been in existence since 
1090, in the reign of William II. After the conquest of Wales, in 
1284, no more marches were created. 

90 : 10. Prohibit by proclamation. The consuls and agents of 
England in Europe had been specially charged to prevent, if pos- 
sible, the shipment of arms and military supplies to the colonies. 

90:14. Disarm New England. Gage had made several seizures 
of powder and stores in the vicinity of Boston. A letter reporting 
his action had been laid before the House, January 19, 1 775. 

go : 17. With more hardship. Because of the greater distance, 

91 : 14. Twenty-seventh year. 1535-1536. English statutes 
are designated as the statutes of such and such a year of the sover- 
eign. Each statute is called a chapter. The act referred to here 
would be cited as 27 Henry VIII, chapter 26. 

91 : 29. Day-star. Compare 2 Peter i. 19. 

92 : 3. Simul alba, etc. 

" When mariners their white star see, — 
Drops from the rocks the refluent spray, 
The clouds disperse, the winds subside, 
While threatening waves their will obey 
And slumber on the tranquil tide." 

— Horace, Odes, i. 12 (Sargent's translation). 

92 : 9. County Palatine. Latin palatiwn, a palace. A county 
palatine was one whose head had virtually the powers of an 
independent sovereign. Chester was granted by William I, being 
designed to serve as a barrier against the Welsh. Like the other 
palatine counties, it had its own parliament and system of courts. 
The eldest son of the sovereign is still given the title of Earl of 



Notes 1 53 



Chester. The county was given representation in Parliament in 
1541. 

92 : 14. Richard the Second. 1377-1399. 

93 : 6. Knight ne burgess. The former represented counties 
or shires, and the latter boroughs or towns, in Parliament. 

93 : 8. Touched and grieved. Affected to their disadvantage 
or injury. 

93 : 14, Libel. Perhaps referring to Gage's rejection, in June, 
1774, of an address from the council of Massachusetts reflecting on 
the conduct of two of his predecessors. Gage characterized the 
address as a " libel," an " insult " to the king, and an " affront " to 
himself. 

93 : 28. Charles the Second. 1 660-1685. 

93 : 29. Durham. Durham was given representation in Parlia- 
ment in 1675, but remained a palatine county under a bishop until 
1836. 

94 : 18. Judge Harrington. Daines Barrington (1727-1800). 
He was appointed justice of the Welsh counties of Merioneth, 
Carnarvon, and Anglesey in 1757. 

95 : 15. Opposuit natura, nature opposed. Juvenal, Satires x, 
152. 

95 : 17. I do not know to be possible. The Resolutions of 
the Stamp Act Congress and the Declaration and Resolves of the 
First Continental Congress had both declared such representation 
to be impracticable. 

95 : 20. Those . . . more confident. Franklin seems to have 
thought it feasible in 1754. In 1769 he still thought it "by no 
means impracticable," but confessed that the time for such a sug- 
gestion had passed, and that the colonies were indifferent to it. 

95 : 21. Arm ... is not shortened. Compare Isaiah lix. i. 

96 : 4. Republic . . . Utopia . . . Oceana. Three works out- 
lining the constitution and government of an imaginary republic. 
The Republic, in form an elaborate dialogue, is one of the best 
known works of Plato (428-347 B.C.) Sir Thomas More (1478- 



154 Notes 



1535) published his Utopia in 15 16. The Oceana of James 
Harrington (1611-1677) appeared in 1656. On More's work see 
Kaufman, Utopias, chap. i. 

96 : 7. Rude swain. From Milton, Conius, 634, 635, but in- 
accurately quoted. 

96 : 8. Clouted shoon. Shoes with clout nails, i.e. short nails 
with large heads. 

96 : 17. Grant. A voluntary contribution, in this case voted by 
a colonial assembly. 

96 : 18. Imposition. A tax imposed by Parliament. 

96 : 20. Aids. In the sense of additional grants. 

97 : 3. Temple of British concord. An allusion to the Temple 
of Concord at Rome. 

97 : 17. Fourteen . . . governments. Besides the thirteen con- 
tinental colonies which were soon to revolt, Burke may have had 
specially in mind Quebec, acquired from France in 1763. Nova 
Scotia also had a government like that of the other colonies, 

97 : 23. Description. The parties named — in this case the 
colonies and plantations — as distinct from the facts alleged. 

97 : 28. Given and granted. Supplies voted by Parliament are 
conceived of as granted to the Crown, as was long the case in 
fact. 

98 : 14. Nonmeus. Misquoted from Horace, Satires, ii. 2, 2-3. 
"Nor is it I that speak, but Ofellus, that plain, simple sage, wise 
without precepts." (Patrick's translation, ii. 112.) 

98 : 20. Touch with a tool. Compare Exodus xx. 25. 
98 : 28. Wise beyond what was written. Compare / Corin- 
thians iv. 6. 

98 : 29. Form of sound words. Compare 2 Timothy i. 13. 

99 : 28. Sixth of George the Second. The so-called Molasses 
Act of 1733, imposing practically prohibitory duties on rum, sugar, 
and molasses imported into the colonies. The important sections 
of the act are in MacDonald, Select Charters, 249-251. 

100 : 4. Duties of 1767. . The Townshend Revenue Act, 



Notes 155 



100 : 5. Lord Hillsborough. 1718-1793. He was secretary 
of state for the colonies from 1768 to 1772. The reference is to a 
circular letter to the governors, May 13, 1769, in which Hillsborough 
declared "that his Majesty's present administration have at no tmie 
entertained a design to propose to Parliament to lay any further 
taxes upun America for the purpose of raising a revenue ; and that 
it is at present their intention to propose the next session of Par- 
liament to take off the duties upon glass, paper, and colors, upon 
consideration of such duties having been laid contrary to the true 
principles of commerce." 

100 : 10. The resolution of the noble lord. Lord North's 
conciliatory resolution. 

100 : 19. On the paper. In the text of the resolution itself. 

100 : 26. Freemen. Those who enjoy all the rights of citizens. 
The word is often used in American colonial history as synonymous 
with voters. 

100 : 26. Freeholders. Those holding land to which they have 
absolute title. A property qualification for voting was universal in 
the colonies. 

loi : 5. Acts of supply. Acts for raising revenue. 

loi : 6. Style. Form of words, usually referring to the title 
of the Act. Article i of the Articles of Confederation reads : 
"The style of this confederacy shall be 'The United States of 
America.' " 

loi : 7. Aid. An aid was originally a free grant of money for 
some particular purpose, and the idea of freedom in the grant con- 
tinued after occasional aids had given place to regular taxes. 
Burke emphasizes the original meaning of the word. 

loi : 8. Passed the public offices. Been approved by the 
proper ofiicers. 

101 : 15. Law servants of the crown. Lord Mansfield, the 
chief justice and a supporter of the Stamp Act, had declared in 
1766, in a debate in the Lords, that no money could be raised by 
taxation without the consent of Parliament. 



156 



Notes 



loi : i6. If the crown could be responsible. The sovereign 
is not responsible to Parliament, but the ministers are. The for- 
mer, however, is bound to act in accordance with the advice of the 
latter in all save foreign affairs. 

loi : 20. Impeachable offences. Impeachment is a method of 
trying and punishing persons for political offenses. The charges 
are preferred by the House of Commons, and the case is tried 
before the House of Lords. 

loi : 21. Council. The Privy Council, formerly a body of ad- 
visers to the Crown, but now a formal body which " meets for the 
purpose of making orders, issuing proclamations, or attending at 
formal acts of State." Cabinet ministers are members of the Council. 

loi : 22. Secretaries of state. There were at this time three 
such officials, one being the Secretary of State for the Colonies. 

loi : 22. Lords of trade. The usual short designation of the 
Lords of the Committee of Trade and Plantations, a committee of 
the Privy Council to whom the oversight of colonial affairs and 
trade was intrusted. The committee became the Board of Trade 
in 1786. See Hart, Conlefnporaries, ii, 129-131. 

loi : 22. Attorneys and all solicitors-general. The first is 
the chief legal adviser of the government. The second is a legal 
official associated with the attorney-general. 

102 : 9. Great expenses. Franklin, in his examination before 
the House of Commons, in January, 1766, said: "The colonies 
raised, clothed, and paid, during the last war, near 25,000 men, and 
spent many millions. . . . We were only reimbursed what, in your 
opinion, we had advanced beyond our proportion, or beyond what 
might reasonably be expected from us; and it was a very small part 
of what we spent." Works (Sparks's edition), iv, 167. 

102 : II. 1695. The date seems to have no special significance. 
The first of the four wars between the French and English colonies 
was then going on. 

102 : 12. 1 710. The year in which Port Royal was taken by an 
Enghsh force composed in part of New England men. 



Notes 



57 



I02 : 13, Journals. Of Parliament. The journal is the legal 
record of proceedings. 

102 : 16. 1748, The date of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 
closing tlie War of the Austrian Succession, — the war known in 
America as King George's War. 

102 : 22. Cape Breton. Taken by the English during the war, 
but restored to France by the treaty of peace. 

103 : 25, Legally. An allusion to the extreme view that money 
for the Crown could be raised only by authority of Parliament, and 
could not be granted by the colonies even as a free gift without 
permission. 

104 : 8. Miserable stories. Many false and exaggerated reports 
of what had taken place in America, and of the refusal of the culo- 
nies to bear any part of the expense incurred in their defense, were 
current in England. 

104 : 13. Paid no taxes. A common argument. 

104 : 16. Mr. Grenville. George Grenville (1712-1770). 
He was prime minister from 1763 to 1765. 

104 : 23. Funds given for sinking the debt. The taxes 
raised by the several colonies for the payment of their debts. 

106 : 21. An act for granting certain duties, etc. The Town- 
shend Revenue Act. The duties imposed by this act, except the 
duty on tea, had already been repealed by an act of 1770. 

106 : 23. Drawback. A rebate, in whole or in part, of the 
import duties paid on articles subsequently exported. 

107 : I. An act to discontinue, etc. The Boston Port Act, 

1774- 
107 : 7. An act for the impartial administration of justice, 

etc. The Administration of Justice Act, 1774. 

107 : 12. An act for the better regulating, etc. The Massa- 
chusetts Government Act, 1774. 

107 : 20. During the king's pleasure. Section viii of the 
act provided "that whenever it shall be made .to appear to his 
Majesty, in his privy council, that peace and obedience to the laws 



158 Notes 



shall be so far restored in the said town of Boston that the trade of 
Great Britain may safely be carried on there, and his Majesty's 
customs duty collected, and his Majesty, in his privy council, shall 
adjudge the same to be true," commerce might be resumed. 

107 : 23. Boston was not heard. Persons or corporations 
affected by proposed legislation are usually entitled to a hearing, 
either by petition or through representatives. The Boston Port 
Act was rushed through Parliament, being introduced March 14, 
1774, and receiving the royal assent March 31. 

108 : 4. Crown has far less power. The charters of Rhode 
Island and Connecticut were the most liberal of all the colonial 
charters. In neither case did the Crown reserve any direct 
authority over the colony. 

108 : 6. Abuses have been full as great. Massachusetts was 
certainly the greater offender, but resistance and violence had 
characterized proceedings in the other colonies as well. 

108 : 16. At his pleasure. The statement is not quite accu- 
rate. The act vested the appointment of sheriffs in the governor, 
without the consent of the council, but the consent of the council 
was necessary to their removal. 

108 : 16. Returning officer. The sheriff, who under the act 
was to return to the court the names of jurors. Jurors had hitherto 
been chosen by the towns. 

108 : 21. Temporary. The act was to continue in force for 
three years from June i, 1774. 

108 : 29. Original intention. The title of the act was : " An 
Act concerning the Trial of Treasons committed out of the King's 
Majesty's Dominions." 

109 : 14. Good behavior. Until the outbreak of the dispute 
with the mother country, the higher judicial officers in the colonies 
had held office during good behavior, thus being made independ- 
ent of political control. In December, 1 761, however, the colonial 
governors had been instructed " to grant no judicial commissions 
but during pleasure." The change created widespread alarm in 



Notes 159 



the colonies. The Massachusetts Circular Letter of 1768 questioned, 
among other points, " Whether any people can be said to enjoy any 
degree of freedom if . . . while the judges of the land, and other 
civil officers, hold not their commissions during good behavior, their 
having salaries appointed for them by the Crovv^n, independent of 
the people, hath not a tendency to subvert the principles of equity, 
and endanger the happiness and security of the subject." 

109 : 20. Courts of admiralty. These courts had jurisdiction 
of maritime cases, including smuggling, and as they sat without a 
jury, subjection to their authority was felt by the colonists to be an 
especial grievance. Offences against the Stamp Act had also been 
placed within the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts concurrently 
with other courts. The resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress pro- 
tested that this had " a manifest tendency to subvert the rights and 
liberties of the colonists." 

log : 24. More commodious. Held at more convenient or ac- 
cessible places. 

109 : 26. Decent maintenance. The first edition of the speech 
has the following footnote : " The solicitor-general informed' Mr. B., 
when the resolutions were separately moved, that the grievance of 
the judges partaking of the profits of the seizure had been redressed 
by office ; accordingly the resolution was amended." 

no : 8. Congress complain. The extension of the jurisdiction 
of the admiralty courts had been condemned in the Declaration 
and Resolves of the First Continental Congress as " subversive of 
American rights." In an "Address to the People of Great Britain " 
the Congress had said : " It was ordained that whenever of- 
fenses should be committed in the colonies against particular acts 
imposing various duties and restrictions upon trade, the prosecutor 
might bring his action for the penalties in the courts of admiralty ; 
by which means the subject lost the advantage of being tried by an 
honest, uninfluenced jury of the vicinage, and was subjected to 
the sad necessity of being judged by a single man, a creature of the 
crown, and according to the course of a law which exempts the 



1 60 Notes 

prosecutor from the trouble of proving his accusation, and obliges 
the defendant either to evince his innocence or to suffer. To give 
this new judicatory the greater importance, and as if vi^ith design to 
protect false accusers, it is further provided that the judge's certifi- 
cate of there having been probable causes of seizure and prose- 
cution shall protect the prosecutor from actions at common law for 
recovery of damages" {/oto'iials of Congress, \. 41). 

no : 23. Prove too much. This had been urged in the House 
of Lords at the time of the repeal of the Stamp Act. 

Ill : 5. Disclaim any such inference. Burke, it should be 
remembered, always defended the settlement made in 1766. 

Ill : 9. Moved to have read. In a speech of January 14, 
1766. 

Ill : 10. Lord Chatham. William Pitt (1708- 17 78), first Earl 
of Chatham, and the foremost champion of the American cause in 
Parliament. 

Ill : II. In favor of his opinions. He had cited the cases of 
Chester, Durham, and Wales in a speech in reply to Grenville. 

111 : 23. De jure or de facto, in law or in fact. 

112 : I. The demand of immunity. This had been the chief 
demand of the colonies up to this time. 

112 : 26. The immediate jewel of his soul. Compare Othello, 
iii. 3. 155, 156. 

112 : 26. Great house. Compare Juvenal, Satires, v. 66 : " Every 
great house is full of haughty slaves." 

113 : 12. The cords of man. Compare Hosea xi. 4. 

113: 14. Aristotle . . . cautions us. " In pursuing this study 
[ethics], we shall have done enough if we attain such precision as 
the subject permits of. For it is a mistake to look for the same ex- 
actness in ail kinds of reasoning, just as it would be in all kinds 
of manufacture. . . . We must be satisfied, therefore, in reason- 
ing upon these subjects, to give only a rough sketch of the truth, 
and when our premises are not universal laws but statements 
of what generally or probably occurs, to draw only probable cm- 



Notes i6i 

elusions. In the same spirit tlie reader must accept all that is here 
stated, for no one who pretends to education will look for more 
exactness in the treatment of any subject than the nature of the 
subject admits of. To ask mathematical demonstrations from an 
orator is as absurd as to accept probable reasoning from a mathe- 
matician" (Aristotle, Nico77iacJiean Ethics, Bk. i, chap, iii, Muir- 
head's translation). 

115 : 9. The committee. The House sitting as a Committee 
of the Whole, February 20. 

115 : 15. Experimentum, etc. Let the experiment be made 
on something worthless. 

115 : 21. Taxing . . . in the ante-chamber. Taxing by deci- 
sion of the cabinet instead of by vote of Parliament. The paragraph 
that follows is a keen exposition of the way in which Lord North's 
plan of conciliation might very possibly work. 

117 : 9. General powers. The colonial agents acted under in- 
structions from the assemblies. 

117 : 16. What is the condition. The report of Congress on 
Lord North's proposition, July 31, 1775, says: "We are of the 
opinion that the proposition contained in this resolution is unrea- 
sonable and insidious: unreasonable, because, if we declare we 
accede to it, we declare, without reservation, we will purchase the 
favor of parliament, not knowing at the same time at what price 
they will please to estimate their favor ; it is insidious, because 
individual colonies, having bid and bidden again till they find the 
avidity of the seller too great for all their powers to satisfy, are 
then to return into opposition, divided from their sister colonies, 
whom the minister will have previously detached by a grant of 
easier terms, or by an artful procrastination of a definitive answer." 
The whole report should be read in connection with this portion of 
the address. The report is in MacDonald, Select Charters, 385-389. 

117 : 26. Perfectly convinced. Since the repeal of the Stamp 
Act there had been no serious thought of taxing the colonies save 
by the imposition of customs duties. 

BURKE ON CONCILIATION — II 



1 62 Notes 

ii8 : 6. English revenue. England derived a large revenue 
from the import duties on tobacco, and the trade in this commodity 
had been the subject of repeated regulation by Parliament. 

ii8 : 19. Confound the innocent with the guilty. The argu- 
ment had been advanced in debate. The active resistance of the 
colonies was still the work of a minority. 

119 : I. Quota. The amount apportioned to each colony. 

119 : 14. Empire of Germany. Not to be confounded vi^ith 
the kingdom of Prussia. 

119 : 24. Wot be to their taste. In introducing his concilia- 
tory resolution, Lord North had said that " it is very probable the 
propositions contained in this resolution may not be acceptable to 
the Americans in general," 

120 : 15. Long discourse. The speech occupied three hours 
in delivery. 

120 : 22. Mean to spare it. "Before the year 1775 closed, 
Burke must have spoken at least a dozen times more on America ; 
and on November 16 he offered another bill for conciliating the 
colonies" (Lamont). 

121 : 1 1. Posita luditur area, the chest {i.e. the pubHc revenue) 
is put at stake. From Juvenal, Satires, i. 90. 

121 : 15. Debt. Cited as proof of the financial strength of the 
kingdom. 

122:22. Ease would retract. yi\%q}ioiedixom Paradise Lost, 
iv. 96, 97. 

122 : 26. The immense, ever-growing, eternal debt. Com- 
pare Paradise Lost, iv. 53. 

123 : II. Bengal. "An arrangement was, in 1769, made be- 
tween the Administration and the East India Directors. The 
Company were to hold the territorial revenues of India for five 
years, they paying ^^400,000 annually into the Exchequer. But in » 
1770 the resources of India materially failed. There was a terrible 
famine in Bengal, in which it is supposed that one third of the 
inhabitants perished. In 1772 the Company declared a deficiency 



Notes 163 



124 ; 


; 6. 


124 ; 


' 7- 


124 ; 


; 9. 


124 : 


; 19. 


124 ; 


: 27. 


125 ; 


: 10. 


125 ; 


; 10. 



of above a million ; obtained loans from the Bank of England to a 
large amount ; and at last went to Parliament for aid. ... In 1773 
an act was passed by which ;i^ 1,400,000 was lent to the Company ; 
the payment of ;i^400,ooo per annum was postponed ; and the divi- 
dend of the proprietors was restricted to 6 per cent, until the loan 
should be repaid" (Knight, History of Etrgland, vi. 334). 

123 : 18. Foreign sale. Sale in foreign countries. Under the 
Navigation Acts colonial trade with Europe, Asia, and Africa had 
been compelled to pass through England. 
123 : 26. Enemies. France and Spain. 

Light as air. Compare Othello, iii. 3. 322-324. 
Links of iron. Compare //^////^ Ccesar, i. 3. 94, 95. 
Grapple. Compare Hamlet, i, 3. 63. 
Turn their faces. See / Kings viii. 44, 45. 
Commodity of price. Compare Matthew xiii. 46. 
Letters of office. Official letters. 
Instructions. Governors and other crown officials in 
the colonies were constantly in receipt of instructions from the 
Lords of Trade or the Secretary of State. 

125 : II. Suspending clauses. Clauses or sections in statutes 
authorizing the suspension of the act, in whole or in part, under 
certain circumstances. 

125 : 22. Land Tax Act. The land tax was one of the most 
important sources of revenue in England. The reduction of the 
tax from4J. to 3^. in the pound, in 1766, created a deficiency in the 
revenue which the Townshend Revenue Act aimed to make good 
in part. 

125 : 23. Annual vote. Appropriations for the support of the 
army are made annually. 

125 : 24. Mutiny Bill. An act, also passed annually, provid- 
ing for the maintenance of discipline by military law. 

126 : 4. Profane herd. Compare Horace, Odes, iii. i. i : "I 
hate and banish hence the crowd profane " (Sargent's translation, 
113). 



164 ' Notes 

126 : 13. All in all. Compare / Corinthians xv. 28. 

126 : 17. Auspicate. Seek favor for in beginning. A refer- 
ence to the Roman auspices. 

126 : 19. Sursum corda. Lift up your hearts. A phrase used 
in the mass, and in the communion service of the Church of Eng- 
land, as the priest proceeds to the consecration of the elements. 

126 : 22. High calling. Compare Philippinns iii. 14. 

127 : 3. Quod felix, etc. May it be happy and prosperous ! 
127 : 12. Previous question. A formal motion, not debatable, 

used to end debate and bring about an immediate vote. The prac- 
tice is often referred to as the closure. 



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